Alexandra Sostmann

ALEXANDRA SOSTMANN

“Her touch is crystal clear, almost sober, thoughtful and transparent, free of pathos, but full of poetry.” This is how the BR Klassik Bavarian broadcasting company describes the playing of the pianist Alexandra Sostmann. Critics and the public are likewise enthusiastic about the broad spectrum of her music selection, from Bach to Xiaoyong Chen. The soloist switches with the greatest of ease from one epoch to the next on the great concert stages of the world and fascinates her audience with her magnificent pianistic resources, as proven by her two cross-epochal solo albums “Bach & Contemporary Music” (2014) and “Bach, Byrd, Gibbons + Contemporary Music” (2020), whose bold selections and brilliant interpretation are praised by critics, and it has also been nominated for the German Record Critics Award.

The exceptional pianist follows another, no less exciting musical route in her solo album “Bach – Chopin” (2017), in which she manages in an intelligent and masterly fashion to stress the artistic affinity between these two so different composers. The publication has been highly praised by the press, not just for the ideas behind the selection of works, but also for Sostmann’s pianistic elegance and transparency. The fact that Lufthansa has adopted the solo album in its inflight programme speaks for itself.

On her latest CD entitled “Grenzgänge”, released in 2021, Alexandra Sostmann also wanders musically between different worlds. In the solo album co-produced with the Bayerischer Rundfunk, she explores musical contrasts as well as common ground from the Baroque to the modern era, from the sacred to the profane, and combines them in a journey from Girolamo Frescobaldi to present-day composers.

Among the contemporary artists with whom she has a close working relationship are the jazz pianist and composer Markus Horn, who teaches at the Hannover University of Music, Iranian-born composer Rouzbeh Rafie, and the internationally renowned Chinese composer Xiaoyong Chen. The latter wrote the piano piece “Diary XI “for her, which she recorded on her highly acclaimed solo album “Bach, Byrd, Gibbons & Contemporary Music”. The German composer Klaus Hinrich Stahmer is also dedicating a piano cycle to her, which she will premiere in Hamburg in November 2021.

For over 10 years, the artist has been working in another, frequently neglected area of piano music. As co-founder of the internationally successful “Duo Villarceaux”, Sostmann has devoted herself to piano music for two pianos and for four hands. Besides radio and TV recordings, the duo has published several CDs on the Thorofon, Phoenix Edition und TYXart labels.

Alexandra Sostmann studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg under Professor Volker Banfield and the celebrated Bach interpreter Professor Evgeni Koroliov as well as at the Royal College of Music in London under Dr Peter Katin, where she graduated with the concert examination. Her training as an artist was rounded off by semesters abroad at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris. While still a student, she won 1st Prize at the Caltanissetta International Chamber Music Competition (1998). Further honours in international piano and chamber music competitions followed. For many years she has been a member of the exclusive circle of Steinway Artists.

As a soloist and chamber musician, she has made a name for herself on prestigious German stages and international concert platforms. Highly acclaimed are her performances at internationally renowned festivals and concert halls as well as at small but superlative music festivals (e.g. the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival), as are her regular and exceedingly successful concert tours of South America, where she also holds master classes. This was also the case in March 2022, when she made her debut at the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo in Bogotà. Concert tours to Ecuador and Argentina are planned for 2023, where she will perform as a soloist with orchestras as well as in chamber music and recitals. And there are other exciting projects on the artist’s schedule: CD recordings, including a BR production of contemporary music.

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