About
ULRICH ROMAN MURTFELD, born in 1970 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, began his professional piano education in Frankfurt at Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory. As a fellow at Phillips Academy Andover, he continued his piano studies with Veronica Jochum in Boston/USA. The Romanian piano pedagogues Ana Pitis and Ioana Minei (Bucharest) had a decisive impact on Murtfeld’s artistic development as well as Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He found additional artistic inspiration in the Lied class of Hartmut Höll and in master classes with Sergei Dorensky (Salzburg/Moscow) and François-René Duchâble (Paris). Murtfeld, who is also a certified Natural Scientist (University Munich, Max-Planck-Institute), passed the concert exam at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe/Germany with distinction in 2003. During the same year he was the “Brahmshaus”- Scholar of the Brahms Society in Baden-Baden.
As a soloist, Murtfeld has performed in numerous European countries as well as in the USA and in Brazil and Venezuela. He has appeared at important festivals such as Auftakt Alte Oper Frankfurt, Kasseler Musiktage, Musikfest Bremen, Thüringer Bachwochen, Festwochen Gmunden, Schloss Elmau and the Festival 2D2N (Odessa). He has given master classes at the University of Brasília and at the National Conservatory in Baku/Azerbaijan. Frequent appearances with chamber music partners round off his artistic activities. Ulrich Roman Murtfeld’s repertoire ranges from Bach to New Music. Characteristic of his concert programs is an innovative and unusual selection of works. His interpretations centre on the classical-romantic heritage (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Liszt) and also on contemporary works. Murtfeld has premiered many contemporary pieces and has cooperated closely with composers such as Jose Antonio Almeida Prado, Violeta Dinescu, Henri Dutilleux, Moritz Eggert, Ernst-Helmuth Flammer, Bernd Franke, Adriana Hölszky, Mauricio Kagel, Art-Oliver Simon and Jörg Widmann. In lecture recitals and seminars he devotes himself also to the theoretical aspects of contemporary music.
Murtfeld’s recordings are regularly broadcast on radio stations worldwide. He has completed recordings for Radio Bremen, Hessischer Rundfunk, Südwestrundfunk, Teleradio Moldova and Radio Romania Bucharest. His discography includes works by Beethoven and Brahms as well as Liszt, Farrenc, Debussy, Dutilleux and Rihm. Murtfeld’s more recent releases are the albums „American Recital“ and “American Recital Vol.2” (audite) with piano works of the American composers Louis Moreau Gottschalk, George Gershwin, Samuel Barber, Philip Glass and Frederic Rzewski and the CD “American Recital Vol.2” (audite 97.740) with piano works of Alexander Reinagle, Edward MacDowell, George Antheil, Charles Ives and Roger Sessions. His latest CD release ist the album “Early Piano Works” (audite 97.811). It is dedicated to early works of the four romantic composers Norbert Burgmüller, Ludwig Schuncke, Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, all of whom shared the same birth year of 1810 and were linked biographically and artistically in a variety of ways.