Jacob Leuschner

Jacob Leuschner, born in Freiburg in 1974, studied in Freiburg and Lübeck. His most important teachers were Helmut Barth, Michel Béroff, Konrad Elser and Leonard Hokanson. Since 1989, he has performed as a soloist and sought-after chamber musician in many European countries, Japan, South Korea, China and the USA, and has been invited to numerous international festivals.

He has been a regular participant in the funding project “Bundesauswahl Konzerte Junger Künstler” (Federal Selection Concerts Young Artists) held by Deutscher Musikrat.
The awards he has won at major piano competitions testify to his artistic stature He is also the recipient of the Possehl Music Prize, the Kai-Uwe von Hassel Prize and the Wiesbaden Mozart Prize.

Jacob Leuschner taught at the University of Music Lübeck, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT in Weimar. From 2008 to 2014, he held a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, and then followed a call to join the Detmold University of Music. He regularly gives masterclasses in many European countries, Japan, China and Korea.

His repertoire ranges from the Virginalists to the present; one focus is the masters of Viennese classical music. He has performed the complete cycles of Mozart’s, Beethoven’s and Schubert’s piano sonatas at several occasions. Leuschner also works as a juror at international piano competitions and as a publisher, and has dealt intensively with historical keyboard instruments. He is the founder and artistic director of the Brahms Piano Competition in Detmold.

His discography includes not only numerous chamber music pieces, such as the complete works for cello and piano by Reger with Guido Schiefen, but also the late Beethoven sonatas and Liszt transcriptions. In addition to two solo CDs, he released a complete recording of Mozart’s sonatas for piano and violin in 2017 with violinist Keiko Urushihara, which was met with enthusiasm by the Japanese trade press and awarded the Excellence Award by the Japanese State Office for Culture. In 2019, his recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations was published.

Photography: Sudi, Detmold