GrauSchumacher Piano Duo

“Not to be missed. The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo have perfected the art of piano playing for four hands. […] The decisive factor is the freedom they achieve in concert at the moment of making music.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher are widely regarded as one of the world’s leading piano duos, renowned for their ability to curate intelligent and imaginative programmes. Their collaboration at the piano is evidence that these two expert pianists are nothing short of musical soul mates. Their masterful command of their instruments, combined with a nuanced, highly expressive musicality, gives their concerts – whether featuring works by Schubert or Stockhausen – a distinctive intensity and immediacy.

The duo’s wide-ranging and multi-faceted interpretations have led to ongoing invitations to international festivals and concert halls, as well as collaborations with renowned conductors such as Michael Gielen, Markus Stenz, Emmanuel Krivine, Kent Nagano, Andrey Boreyko, and Zubin Mehta. As soloists, they have played with all of the German radio symphony orchestras, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as at the George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Rheingau Music Festival, at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Kölner Philharmonie, Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Wiener Konzerthaus, Tonhalle Zürich, the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, De Doelen in Rotterdam, the Concertgebouw in Bruges or the Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

Recent appearances have included the Philharmonie Berlin, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the Teatro Petruzzelli Bari, the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele and the Klavier-Festival Ruhr. This season will see them performing at festivals such as the Styriarte in Graz, the Musikfestspiele Saar, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the TIME:SPANS Festival in New York. As artists in residence with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música in 2022, the duo presented its stylistic expertise from classical to contemporary music: throughout the year, Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher performed concertos by Bach, Mendelssohn, Francis Poulenc, and Wolfgang Rihm, working with conductors such as Michael Sanderling, Sylvain Cambreling, and Rebecca Tong.

Through their performances of well-known orchestral concertos, the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo is always striving for new ways to extend the repertoire for two pianos and orchestra. They have, for example, initiated an arrangement by Stefan Heucke of Franz Liszt’s famous Concerto Pathétique for two pianos and orchestra, which they performed again with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen during the current season. With the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Marc Albrecht, they presented the German premiere of Claudio Ambrosini’s Plurimo. Inspired by the duo’s virtuoso yet delicate playing, leading contemporary composers such as Péter Eötvös, Philippe Manoury, Luca Francesconi and Isabel Mundry have written new concertos for Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher. The duo also regularly performs new recital works, most recently by Brigitta Muntendorf, Bernd Richard Deutsch, Johannes Maria Staud and Ming Tsao.

Alongside their recital and orchestral appearances, Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher regularly realise interdisciplinary art and music projects. They have intensified their collaboration with German actor Ulrich Noethen, creating new projects in addition to their acclaimed Schubert programme, such as a new Shostakovich programme based on Julian Barnes’s novel The Noise of Time.

The duo’s carefully curated programmes are also a hallmark of their numerous recordings, released, among others, on the label Neos, where they have their own series: the Concerti I-III series, recorded with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and featuring works from Bach and Mozart to Poulenc and John Adams, stands alongside “reference recordings” (Fono Forum) such as Fantasias (Schubert, Purcell/Kurtág, Mozart/Busoni, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff) and Stockhausen’s Mantra (“exemplary”, Piano News). In 2021, the duo received the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award) for Christophe Bertrand’s Vertigo with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel.