Axel Gremmelspacher

Pianist Axel Gremmelspacher, born in Freiburg, Germany in 1974, performs an extremely versatile repertoire as a soloist and chamber musician. In his programmes, he takes interest in placing traditional works and 20th/21st century repertoire in dramaturgically exciting relationships to one another. His view of traditional and contemporary art music is influenced not least by his experience as a jazz pianist. Sophisticated literary-musical projects, e.g. on Jean-Paul or Stefan Zweig or Mathias Spahlinger's “farben der frühe” for seven pianos are just as much a part of his artistic spectrum as solo recitals.

His performances as well as collaborations with chamber music partners such as Julia Brembeck-Adler (viola), Lucas Fels (cello), Irmela Roelcke (piano), Tomislav Baynov (piano) and Zoltán Kovács (clarinet) have taken him to numerous European countries, Canada and Hong Kong. He has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, among others the Toronto Wind Orchestra, the Mainz Chamber Orchestra and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn.

CD productions with NEOS, Gramola, Wergo and GENUIN, including solo repertoire, duos with violist Julia Brembeck-Adler and pianist Irmela Roelcke as well as the premiere recording of Mathias Spahlinger's “farben der frühe” for seven pianos, document his artistic work. His concerts and recordings have been broadcast on all major German radio stations.

Axel Gremmelspacher was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main in 2010, where he was a member of the university management as Vice President from 2019-2022.

He studied in Freiburg, Boston and Hannover with Robert Levin, Raymond Santisi, James Avery and David Wilde as well as with John Perry in Toronto as a scholarship holder of the Rotary Foundation and the Canadian government. He was awarded with the scholarship of the German Music Competition and became a member of the German Music Council’s “Concerts of Young Artists”. Important artistic impulses in master classes with Leon Fleisher, André Laplante, Marc Durand, Wolfram Christ, Hansheinz Schneeberger and Jörg Widmann inspired his artistic development in manifold ways.