Christine Schornsheim

As a performer specializing in historical keyboards, Christine Schornsheim appears regularly on both harpsichord and fortepiano, whether as a soloist or within chamber and orchestral contexts, and she maintains a substantial profile as an instructor.

Born in East Berlin in 1959, she is also identified at times by her married name, Christine Engelmayr. She completed her secondary studies from 1969 to 1976 at the Musikgymnasium Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and then pursued piano training at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her deepening engagement with period instruments led her to serve as a répétiteur at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, where she also attended master classes with Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman, and Andreas Staier. She has sustained a close partnership with fortepianist Staier, frequently presenting two-piano repertoire together. During the 1980s and 1990s she operated as an independent artist and performed at major German festivals such as the Europäischen Musikfest in Stuttgart, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and the Berliner Bach-Tagen.

In 1988 Schornsheim was appointed lecturer in harpsichord and continuo at the Leipzig Hochschule für Musik, becoming a full professor in 1992. She entered the recording catalog the following year on the Brilliant label, partnering with oboist Burkhard Glaetzner in sonatas by François Devienne. Beginning in 1994 she accompanied tenor Peter Schreier on fortepiano and has remained active in smaller ensembles, including the Berliner Barock-Compagney and Münchner Cammer-Music, of which she has been a member. As a recitalist and concerto soloist she concentrates on late Baroque and mid-eighteenth-century repertoire, encompassing music by J.S. Bach and his sons, Telemann, Boccherini, and Fasch.

She joined the faculty of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich in 2002 and continues to teach there. In the twenty-first century she has devoted increasing attention to the fortepiano, most notably with a 2005 fourteen-disc Capriccio set containing all of Haydn’s keyboard sonatas performed on appropriate instruments; the project received extensive critical praise and several major awards. She has issued additional recordings on the same label, among them a 2016 release of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. In 2022 she provided fortepiano support for soprano Bettina Pahn on the album O, wie beseligend, devoted to songs by Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. By then her recorded output had reached approximately forty releases.