Andreas Staier

Andreas Staier ranks among the leading keyboard specialists devoted to period instruments within the classical sphere. He has appeared alongside numerous premier historical-performance ensembles and soloists while maintaining an extensive schedule of concerts and studio projects across several decades.

Born on September 13, 1955, in Göttingen, then located in West Germany, Staier began his training on the modern piano. Instruction in continuo realization for Baroque repertoire at the Hannover Conservatory redirected his focus to the harpsichord. He advanced his education in Amsterdam under Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Ton Koopman. Encountering the distinctive sonority and expressive possibilities of the fortepiano when applied to composers of its own era, particularly Mozart and Beethoven, ignited his sustained interest in that instrument.

He entered Musica Antiqua Köln as harpsichordist in 1983 and left the group in 1986 to pursue a solo career centered on harpsichord and fortepiano, with occasional clavichord appearances. From 1987 to 1996 he also taught at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. His debut recording, Bach: Clavierfantasien, appeared on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in 1989.

Although his recital programs and discs center on the principal Baroque composers, they also incorporate earlier repertory and Spanish keyboard literature. Staier deliberately traces meaningful relationships among works from disparate periods. After deferring a public presentation of the Goldberg Variations for nearly a quarter century, he gave the long-planned first performance in Montréal at the end of April 2000. He has appeared at major festivals and in leading concert halls worldwide, touring extensively throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and South America.

Staier regularly collaborates with other distinguished musicians, among them Anner Bylsma, Tatiana Grindenko, René Jacobs, and several prominent early-music ensembles. His most sustained partnership is with tenor Christoph Prégardien, with whom he explores the early-Romantic song literature; their Teldec recording of Schubert’s Winterreise earned six major international recording prizes. In 2007 he received the Diapason d’Or for Mozart am Stein vis-à-vis, performed on a hybrid vis-à-vis instrument that merges harpsichord and fortepiano characteristics.

While recording for Harmonia Mundi, Staier sustained a demanding release schedule through the 2010s and into the 2020s. In 2015 he issued Brahms clarinet sonatas with Lorenzo Coppola, employing an 1875 Steinway piano known to have been favored by the composer and thereby extending his historical approach into the late nineteenth century. That same year he released a set of Bach harpsichord concertos recorded with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. He remained productive during the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier and, on the Alpha label, the Baroque recital Méditation in 2024. By then his discography encompassed roughly eighty titles.