Piano Concertos

Editor's Choice - Gramophone Magazine (April 2005)

"If you like your Haydn decorated, this sparkling disc could prove ideal. Now comes a splendid period-instrument recording that reinvests these wonderfully inventive pieces with a real sense of novelty. The sounds of the Freiburg orchestra are thrilling in their raw energy and bite. A splendid alternative to the Andsnes."
(Gramophone)

'An exercise for composers and instrumentalists, with no ambition other than to offer a vague pleasure to the ear': one hopes that the author of this judgment pronounced in 1771 went on to temper his remarks when he heard such masterpieces as Haydn's concerto in D major, with its celebrated 'Hungarian' finale. It is true that in the last years of the Baroque period the genre was somewhat in eclipse: the Classical style was born of a certain facility - which is nonetheless highly entertaining!

Andreas Staier was born in Göttingen in 1955, and studied the piano and the harpsichord in Hanover and Amsterdam. As harpsichordist of the ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln, between 1983 and 1986, he undertook a series of international concert tours that took him all over Europe as well as to South and North America, Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia. Since 1986 Andreas Staier has pursued a career as a freelance soloist and has earned an outstanding reputation as both harpsichordist and fortepianist. In the field of chamber music he has had long and fruitful partnerships with such internationally renowned artists as Christoph Prégardien, Pedro Memelsdorff, Fabio Biondi, Tatiana Grindenko, René Jacobs, and Alexei Lubimov. Andreas Staier regularly appears as a soloist in the concerto repertoire with ensembles including Concerto Köln, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and the Orchestre des Champs Elysées. From 1987 to 1996 he taught the harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Andreas Staier is a frequent guest at many of the world's major concert halls and international music festivals, among them the festivals of La Roque-d'Anthéron, Saintes, Montreux, Graz, Feldkirch, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik-Festival, the Bach-Fest Leipzig, the Bachtage Berlin, the Bachwoche Ansbach.

Andreas Staier has made numerous CD recordings on the Deutsche harmonia mundi and Teldec labels, many of which have been distinguished by international awards. In 2002 he was awarded the 'Ehrenurkunde' of the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in recognition of the whole of his exceptional career to date.