Gerhard Oppitz

Born in Frauenau, Bavaria, on February 5, 1953, then part of West Germany, pianist Gerhard Oppitz began playing at age five and delivered his debut public recital in Stuttgart at eleven. Local instructor Paul Buck guided his early development there, after which Oppitz continued training with Hugo Steurer in Munich. His decisive influence arrived in 1973 through Wilhelm Kempff, who publicly expressed the belief that Oppitz would extend the interpretive lineage Kempff himself embodied. The young artist’s first major accolade came in 1977 when he claimed first prize at the Artur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, the initial German pianist to achieve that distinction. An initial LP appeared the following year, and in 1981 he joined the faculty of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich as its youngest-ever instructor.

Although his recordings concentrated on core repertory spanning Mozart through the close of the nineteenth century, Oppitz regularly programmed twentieth-century scores by Boulez, Henze, Ligeti, and Messiaen in live performance. He speaks seven languages and maintains a pilot’s license, frequently piloting his own aircraft to engagements. Recital and concerto appearances have taken him to principal European venues, yet he is most closely identified with Brahms, whose complete keyboard output he committed to disc. Parallel projects encompass the full Beethoven and Mozart piano sonatas plus the entirety of Schubert’s and Grieg’s solo piano music. He is also among the small number of pianists to have recorded Max Reger’s Piano Concerto, Op. 114.

Releases have appeared on several labels, with the largest share issued by RCA and, later, Hänssler Classic. Oppitz concluded his tenure at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in 2013 yet sustained an active concert and recording schedule. In 2023 Hänssler Classic issued his Schumann recital, bringing his discography to roughly seventy-five compact discs together with the LPs produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s.