The Klangakademie Hamburg

The first edition of the « Klangakademie Hamburg » will take place from the 16th to 22nd of July 2018 in the « Klangmanufaktur » in Hamburg, Germany. This summer academy’s mission is to bring together pianists of all stripes under the motto « the sound of the piano is a collaborative art between pianists, concert technicians, instruments and the acoustics of the venue itself ».

One of the biggest challenges for today’s pianists is to create the expected sound with an instrument that differs with each concert. The « Klangakademie Hamburg » is dedicated to pianists wishing to prepare a concert or a competition. The academy proposes to explore the maximum expressive potential of each concert piano through masterclasses and piano lessons, tuning, making this instrument as well as a concert academy.

This academy is the initiative of Jongdo An, a concert pianist, Piano lecturer and winner of the Marguerite Long-Thibaud-Crespin international piano competition in Paris. In addition, two famous names from the classical music scene were invited. Winner of the New York Young Concert Artist, the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Beethoven piano competition in Bonn, Rémi Géniet will hold masterclasses with Jan Kittel, who is in charge of the concert piano of the most famous piano competitions such as Reine Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky, Chopin as well as many pianists around the world like Maurizio Pollini, Grigory Sokolov, Andras Schiff, Martha Argerich, Lang Lang, Arkady Volodos, Evgeny Kissin and Murray Perahia.

Pavel Gililov, as a professor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and President of the Beethoven International Piano Competition in Bonn, is the the honory professor of this first edition of the « Klangakademie Hamburg »

The Klangakademie Hamburg has two main parts : Masterclass and Piano Festival

In the masterclass, we learn two languages of sound through 4 piano lessons, 3 piano tuning lessons and 2 piano manufacturing seminars with French pianist Rémi Geniet, Jongdo An and concert technician Jan Kittel.

Firstly, the artistic language : to understand how to interpret and express the piano music

Secondly, the technical language : to understand how a piano is designed acoustically and mechanically and how to prepare a best possible concert piano with piano technicians.

Creating sounds with a new piano on a new stage every time is truly the challenging of the Pianist.

Therefore the goal of Klangakademie Hamburg is to offer participants the knowledge how to approach in order to get the best sound from each different pianos.

The academy will be held in Klangmanufaktur Hamburg, a workshop of the restauration of Steinway piano. So, we can watch there all process of the piano manufacturing.

A piano festival as part of the academy, it names ‘Klangkunst Sommer 2018’. There are three concerts in 3 different venues in Hamburg.

Program « Klangkunst Sommer 2018 »

July the 16th, 2018 : July Piano Recital ´Appassionata´, Pianist Rémi Geniet 

(2 Winner of international Queen Elisabeth Competition)

20H 00 Klangmanufaktur Hamburg

Remi Geniet will present his newest cd program, which was appreciated by Diapason d’Or. The works of Beethoven Piano Sonata  « Appassionata », Stravinsky « Trois Mouvements de Petroushka », Ravel « La Valse » etc.

July the 18th:  Piano Concert  « Piano Music : Hamburg and his Composers »

The participants of Klangakademie Hamburg

18H00  Lichtwarcksaal, the music of G. Händel, J. Mattheson, F. Mendelssohn, J. Brahms etc.

 The concert hall ‘Lichtwarck Saal’ is situated in the KomponistenQuartier (the quartier of composers) where situated the 6 museums of 6 greatest Hamburg composers. So, the participants play a piece of music Hamburgeoise of those composers.

July  the 22nd :Piano public Masterclass & moderated Concert with Jan Kittel, Jongdo An.

17H00, Halle 424 Hamburg

The world renowned piano technician Jan Kittel and Jongdo an as a pianist are giving a public piano masterclass and concert. They will be explaining  during the concert how the piano was developed and how we should play the music which was composed for Clavecin or Piano Forte on our modern piano with appropriated interpretation.