Martin Helmchen

Pianist Martin Helmchen sustains a vigorous schedule in chamber music while appearing often as a concerto soloist and recitalist, and he has also earned recognition as an educator. Born in West Berlin, Germany, in 1982, he started piano lessons at six and later entered the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Musikgymnasium in the former East Berlin as its first admitted student from West Berlin. He pursued advanced studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler with Galina Iwanzowa before continuing with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover, and he received further lessons and guidance from Alfred Brendel along with other mentors. Victories at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in 2001 and the International Kissinger Klavierolymp in 2003, followed by an ECHO Klassik award as Young Artist of the Year in 2006, helped establish his career. His first recording, issued in 2002 on the Claves label under the title Martin Helmchen, Piano, preceded an extensive series of chamber and concerto discs on PentaTone that opened with a Mozart piano concerto album featuring the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. He has performed as soloist with leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the NHK Symphony, and he made his U.S. debut in 2011 with the Boston Symphony at the Tanglewood festival. His recital schedule has included repeated engagements at Wigmore Hall in London. Chamber music collaborations have linked him with violinists Gidon Kremer and Christian Tetzlaff as well as cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, to whom he is married, and he has also accompanied singers including Matthias Goerne. In the late 2010s he launched a cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas with violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, touring the programs across Europe and recording them for the BIS label. He has additionally recorded for the Alpha label, including a 2021 release of Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 958, with Tetzlaff and other musicians. Since 2010 he has taught chamber music at Germany’s Kronberg Academy.