Markus Becker

Born in Osnabrück in 1963 and trained in Hannover with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Markus Becker has developed a career as a pianist moving between the classical repertoire, chamber music and jazz practice. Long established in the German musical life, he has taught piano and chamber music since 1993 at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover. Markus Becker has especially devoted himself to Germanic composers and the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, with notable attention to rarely performed works and the great concertos around 1900. His discography includes, notably, the complete piano works of Max Reger, recorded between 1996 and 2000; Hindemith's piano sonatas in 2012; a Reubke program in 2014; Haydn piano sonatas in 2016, and Solitude: Piano Works Volume II in 2020; as well as concertos by Widor in 2010, Antheil in 2006, Jadassohn and Draeseke in 2009, and Pfitzner and Braunfels in 2019. In chamber music Becker has played with performers such as Albrecht Mayer, Sharon Kam, Tabea Zimmermann, Nils Mönkemeyer, Adrian Brendel and Alban Gerhardt. His activity also includes improvised projects and jazz recordings such as Kiev/Chicago in 2013, Freistil in 2019 and Alleingang in 2021, which illustrate Becker’s precise, flexible and open playing across several musical languages.