1962–2021
Stefan
Mickisch.
Pianist. Storyteller. Explorer.
An Stefan Mickisch in WalhallTributes & memoriesPianist · Music educator
A life that gave music a voice.
Stefan Mickisch combined the virtuosity of a concert pianist with a researcher’s curiosity and a storyteller’s delight. Listening to him meant exploring operas and symphonies from within: motifs taking new shapes, keys colouring a scene, and ideas extending beyond the notes. At the piano, he demonstrated what he explained. This conversation between playing and speaking became his distinctive art of the lecture concert.
His journey began in Schwandorf, Bavaria, in a musical family. He started piano lessons with his father Heinrich Mickisch at four and gave his first public concert in Waldmünchen in 1969. Violin, viola, organ and improvisation later broadened his musical experience. When reading a score, he heard voices, strings and an entire orchestra through the piano.
01 / STEFAN MICKISCH
Bringing an opera to life at the piano.
The lecture concert gave Mickisch room to perform, explain and improvise. He traced musical connections through literature, history and philosophy, studying these subjects alongside the scores. An explanation became something the audience could hear as his hands returned to the keyboard.
His training took him through Nuremberg, Hanover and Vienna. His teachers included Erich Appel, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Leonid Brumberg. Masterclasses and studies in musical phenomenology with Sergiu Celibidache added further perspectives. Chamber music and orchestral playing remained part of his life, extending his musical interests well beyond his own instrument.
02 / STEFAN MICKISCH
Understanding Wagner. Hearing him afresh.
An artistic residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 1993 inspired Mickisch’s first Wagner lecture concerts. In the United States, he worked on Götterdämmerung at the piano and explained Wagner’s music in English. Over the following years he studied the scores and piano reductions of every Wagner opera. His first Wagner CD appeared in 1994, followed by an international Wagner tour in 1996.
Bayreuth became central to his work from 1998. Until 2014, with a break in 2012, he gave summer introductory matinees from the piano, exploring leitmotifs, harmonic relationships and the ideas behind the works. He also performed elsewhere in Bayreuth: Auf Wagners Steinway was recorded at Haus Wahnfried in 2000. In 2019 he returned with eleven lecture concerts during the festival.
03 / STEFAN MICKISCH
A musical world beyond Wagner.
His repertoire ranged from Bach and Mozart through Beethoven and Schumann to Richard Strauss, Korngold and Schreker. From 2006 he presented his own annual concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus. His retrospective for fifty years on stage in 2019 recorded around 2,500 concerts in 36 countries. He gave lecture concerts in German, English, French and Japanese.
Recordings released through his own Fafnerphon label from 1991 preserve this work: piano performance and explanation, the sweep of a whole piece and close attention to a single motif. They invite listeners to rediscover familiar music and explore the unknown. Mickisch’s voice, playing and musical perspective remain accessible here.
„I will always play for you!“Explore recordings
A life in music.
- 1962
Born in Schwandorf, Bavaria.
- 1969
First public concert in Waldmünchen.
- 1982–1991
Studies in Hanover and Vienna after training in Nuremberg.
- 1991
First CD on his own Fafnerphon label.
- 1993
First Wagner lecture concerts during a residency in the United States.
- 1998
Begins introductory matinees for the Bayreuth Festival.
- 2006
Begins his own series at the Wiener Konzerthaus.
- 2019
Fifty years on stage and the Stefan Mickisch Music Festival.