Sebastian Knauer
A phenomenon. If one word could describe the pianist Sebastian Knauer, this would be it. Whether as a soloist on the international concert stage, as a visionary trailblazer for contemporary composers, or as a communicator and festival director, Sebastian Knauer’s imaginative programming ideas have been winning over audiences for years. In addition to innovative concerts combining classical, film, and pop music, Knauer has developed projects uniting music with other art forms and made recordings of international standing.
The aim of his work is to develop new concepts and formats, to extend the range of classical music, and to inspire people to attend concerts. He says, "I see myself as a bridge builder, as a communicator both on and behind the stage." His work to expand the existing piano repertoire has been a particularly important contribution. In projects with composers such as David and Thomas Newman, Conrad Pope, Michael Nyman, and Arash Safaian, numerous new works and arrangements have been created that have already found their way into a new concert canon.
The Hamburg native, whose career and family history are closely linked to the Hanseatic city, is at home all over the world and has performed in renowned concert halls and series at Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, New York’s Lincoln Center, Beijing’s National Center for Performing Arts, and Tokyo’s Toppan Hall. As a welcome festival guest, he regularly receives invitations to the Salzburg Festival, the Schubertiade Hohenems, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Dresden Music Festival, and the festivals in Gstaad, Ravinia, Savannah, and Shanghai, to name only a few.
Sebastian Knauer has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Philharmonia Zürich, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Camerata Salzburg, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the New York City Opera Orchestra. He has worked with many of the world’s most renowned conductors, including Fabio Luisi, Thomas Hengelbrock, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Fedossejew, Ingo Metzmacher, Markus Poschner, Sarah Hicks, Simone Young, and Jaap van Zweden.
Chamber music plays an important role in Sebastian Knauer's artistic work. His regular partners have included Renaud Capuçon, Carolin Widmann, Sol Gabetta, Jan Vogler, Sabine Meyer, and Albrecht Mayer, as well as the Emerson String Quartet, the singers Anne Sofie von Otter, Mojca Erdmann, and Michael Schade, and the drummers Stewart Copeland (of The Police) and Jason Marsalis.
Cross-genre concepts are particularly close to Sebastian Knauer’s heart. He has been part of various projects by choreographer John Neumeier and his company, including the world premiere of "Bernstein Dances". In 2024, he went on a "Classical meets Pop" tour with his friend Johannes Strate, front man of the German rock band Revolverheld.
For more than 20 years, Knauer has been merging the related arts of literature and music with numerous "Word meets Music" projects and has created full-length programs with actors Hannelore Elsner, Martina Gedeck, Iris Berben, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Katja Riemann, and Ulrich Tukur, among others. As co-founder of the "Hamburger Pianosommer", he and the pianists Martin Tingvall, Axel Zwingenberger, and Joja Wendt fill the Elbphilharmonie and the Hamburg State Opera every year with a program of classical music, boogie-woogie, and jazz. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, the four pianists will be touring Germany in 2026.
A look at Sebastian Knauer's numerous award-winning recordings also shows his love of diverse repertoire: in 2024, he dedicated himself to the legendary Newman family of film composers with "HOLLYWOOD" (Warner Classics) and commissioned several works for the album. For "This is (not) Beethoven" (BMG/Modern Recordings) and "ÜberBach" (Berlin Classics), he worked with Arash Safaian and received the ECHO Klassik award in the "Classical Music without Borders" category. His recordings for Berlin Classics with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, "Bach & Sons (conducted by Sir Roger Norrington) and "Bach & Sons II", also received outstanding reviews. The project "East meets West" (Warner Classics), which Knauer recorded together with Daniel Hope, received the ECHO Klassik as well as a Grammy nomination.
Further recording projects have been released by Deutsche Grammophon and Naxos and include works by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert as well as the American composers Gershwin, Barber, Bernstein, and Copland.
In addition to his work as a pianist, Sebastian Knauer is artistic director of the mozart@augsburg festival, which he founded in 2012, and has been the director of the International Music Festival at Schloss Berleburg since 2017.
In addition to his many commitments as a performer, Sebastian Knauer supports various charitable institutions and draws attention to social issues with selected projects. Together with the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper, he developed the concert project "RESPEKT" in 2017, for which more than 2,000 police officers were invited to the Elbphilharmonie as a sign of recognition for their service during the serious riots during the Hamburg G20 summit.
