Sunday, January 22, 2023

Roland Krüger

Teaching Languages : English, German
Teaching Period : August 5 (arrival) - 11 (departure)



Prof. Roland Krüger began his studies with Prof. Oleg Maisenberg and then continued for a long period with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. From 1999 until 2001 he was one of the very few selected students in the class of Krystian Zimerman in Basel, Switzerland.

In 2001, Roland Krüger was awarded the First Prize and the Audience’s Award at the Geneva Competition (Concours de Genève), being the first pianist after eleven years to receive this prize. As a soloist, he worked with orchestras such as Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre National de Belgique, Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR, Basler Sinfonie-Orchester and Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn under conductors like Fabio Luisi, Dennis Russell Davies, Othmar Maga, Eiji Oue or Marc Soustrot.

He performed Piano Recitals and Concertos in many important international venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Musikhalle (Laeiszhalle) in Hamburg, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Casino in Basel, the Beethoven Hall in Bonn, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival or the Festival di Ravello in Italy.
Krüger’s repertoire reaches from Baroque to the collaboration with composers of our time. Over the years, he has been especially engaged in the music of Bach, the sonatas of Haydn and Beethoven, the German Romantics (Schubert, Schumann, Brahms) and the music of the 20th century.

Some highlights of his countless Chamber Music activities were performances of Mahler, Korngold and Schönberg at the Brucknerhaus Linz, Mozart/Hummel at the Mozart House Vienna and Messiaen at the Festival de la Habana in Cuba. He has also developed projects in collaboration with distinguished German actors Christian Quadflieg and Bernt Hahn.

In 2002, Krüger started teaching as an assistant of Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, and, from 2004 until 2008, conducted his own piano class at the Music Academy of Kassel. In 2007, he became professor at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Today he is highly known as a very much sought-after professor. Many of his students have regularly won prizes, for example in Aarhus, Barletta, Dresden (Anton Rubinstein), Meiningen (von Bülow), at the “Young Pianists of the North” Competition, in Paris (Ile de France), Sendai or Zwickau (Schumann).
In his class Krüger currently teaches 15 students from 8 nations. He is Head of the “Bachelor of Piano” Programme in Hanover.

Roland Krüger has been teaching in master classes in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, China, Korea and at the Lithuanian Music Academy of Vilnius. He is often invited as a jury member of national (Deutscher Musikwettbewerb, Bundeswettbewerb “Jugend musiziert”) and international piano competitions.

He recorded Debussy’s 12 Études for Ars Musici and received raving reviews. Further recordings include solo works by Schubert, Janacek and Bartók as well as chamber music by Schubert and Brahms together with clarinetist Dimitri Ashkenazy for paladino music. In 2013 he released a CD with music by Joseph Merk on Naxos, together with Cellist Martin Rummel. Another Naxos-CD (Mozart/Hummel).