Ingolf Wunder recital (2^nd prize)

Ingolf Wunder
Piano

• Prize-winner at the VII International Music Competition Premio Vittoria Caffa Righetti in Cortemilia (1^st prize, 1999)
• Prize-winner at the XIV European Music Competition in Turin (winner in his age category, 1999)
• Prize-winner at the LXIII Steinway Piano Competition in Hamburg (1^st prize, 1999)
• Prize-winner at the  Prima la musica 2000 music competition in Feldkirch (1^st prize, 2000)
• Prize-winner at the  Concours Musical de France in Asti (1^st prize, 2000)
• Prize-winner at the VI Trofeo Internazionale in Casarza Ligure (1^st prize, 2000)
• Prize-winner at the XXXVI Franz Liszt Competition in Budapest (Liszt Prize of the City of Budapest)
• Prize-winner at the XVI International Frédéric Chopin Competition in Warsaw (2^nd prize, 2010)

Ingolf Wunder was born on 8 September 1985 in Austria. He had his first music lesson at the age of four and was already celebrating his first musical successes on the violin by the age of eight. At the age of fourteen, one of his teachers happened to discover his stunning skills on the piano and convinced him to study the instrument seriously. Ingolf took to his studies in earnest and that same year he made his debut at the Schubert-Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus. Following his dazzling success he resolved to forsake the violin in order to dedicate himself fully to the piano. Ingolf Wunder studied at the Viennese Academy of Music for a lengthy period and today continues to train with acclaimed musicians to bring his skills to even greater levels.
In his style one gains an impression of the judgement and restraint with which he uses his prodigious technique as well as his exceptional ability to convey a piece of music “so that it seems to lie before him like an immense landscape, revealed to the eye at a single glance.” Wunder probably owes his stunning ability to see the structure of a work to his training at music school, where he developed a deep love for music as well as an insatiable appetite for musical knowledge. In his childhood he was remarkable for his boundless curiosity and his extraordinary memory, which has led him to develop his rich and varied gift. It is one of Wunder’s most surprising and valued qualities as a performer (one shared by the world’s great virtuosos today) that he focuses the attention of his audiences entirely on whatever music he happens to be playing.
Among the most outstanding of Ingolf Wunder’s characteristics is his uncanny ability to convey the tiniest details while, at the same time, not harming the music’s integrity. He also succeeds in taking down all the barriers between the composer and the listener.
Unlike many young performers, Wunder is not in the business of brandishing his polyphonic technique (although his performances of polyphonic works sound unusually precise and expressive) or dazzling the audience with the lightness of his hands, the elegance of his ornamentation or the rigour of his musical scholarship. In his performances he transcends the whole concept of historicism, rendering it ultimately irrelevant by illuminating, with an art that defies analysis, the sheer universality of the music itself.
Ingolf Wunder’s performed his first recitals and made his debut with an orchestra at the age of fifteen. The musician’s tours have taken him to countries throughout the world, among them Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Luxemburg, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, China, Argentina, Cyprus and the USA.