Andreas Haefliger, piano

Andreas Haefliger was born into a distinguished Swiss musical family and grew up in Germany, going on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. With his formidable technique and musicality, and his innate sense of architecture and phrasing, he was quickly recognised as a pianist of the first rank.

Engagements with major US orchestras followed swiftly — the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh, Chicago and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestras among them. In his native Europe too, Haefliger was invited to the great orchestras and festivals — such as the Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Symphony.He also established himself as a superb recitalist, making his New York debut in 1988, and became frequent performer at premier recital venues and festivals around the world, notably the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals, the BBC Proms and the Wiener Festwochen.

Concerto plans in 2012/13 include Mozart with the Orchestre de Paris and Paavo Järvi at the Salle Pleyel and on tour to Zurich, Geneva, Berne and Lucerne; Bartók 3 in Madrid, and Beethoven 1 with the National Symphony in Washington and Jaap van Zweden. This follows a succession of highlights last season, notably Beethoven 4 with the Philharmonia and Christoph von Dohnanyi at the Royal Festival Hall, Brahms 1 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Vassily Petrenko, and Beethoven 2 with the Sydney Symphony and David Zinman.

The focus of Haefliger’s solo recital appearances in recent years has been an ongoing series Perspectives in which he performs the complete piano works of Beethoven alongside works by other composers including Mozart, Schubert, Bartók, Brahms, Janáček, Schoenberg and Ligeti. The recital programmes have all been recorded for the Avie label, to widespread critical acclaim. Haefliger will play a number of recitals on this theme in the coming years at the Wigmore Hall and other leading venues, and in autumn 2012 he takes Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata to NCPA Beijing and Shanghai Concert Hall.

Haefliger is also much sought-after as a chamber musician. Amongst his regular collaborators over the years have been Matthias Goerne, with whom he releases Schubert songs on Harmonia Mundi this season; the Takacs Quartet, with whom he recently played at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York; and his wife the distinguished flautist Marina Piccinini with whom he played at the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival last season. A particularly successful collaboration with the Tokyo Quartet at the Wigmore Hall last spring will be followed by a new partnership with rising star baritone Markus Werba at the same venue in February 2013, along with a solo recital.

After the enormous success of his first recording of Mozart Sonatas for Sony Classical, Haefliger made three further recordings for Sony of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanze and Fantasiestücke, Schubert Impromptus, and a disc of music by Sofia Gubaidulina. Later Haefliger recorded for Decca with the Takacs Quartet and Matthias Goerne, the latest Goerne/Haefliger release of Schubert’s Goethe Lieder being awarded a Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.