Ulrich Eisenlohr

Pianist Ulrich Eisenlohr specializes in lied accompaniment and chamber music. He has collaborated with many of Germany's leading singers, spearheaded a complete cycle of Schubert's songs, and served for many decades as an educator. Eisenlohr was born in 1950. He studied piano at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim, where his teacher was Rolf Hartmann, and went on for special study in lieder with Konrad Richter at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. From early in his career, Eisenlohr was active primarily as a song accompanist and as a chamber music player. His collaborators in the lieder field have included Christoph Prégardien, Matthias Goerne, Wolfgang Holzmair, and a long list of other German singers. He began teaching at the conservatory in Mannheim, his alma mater, in 1982, and he has also lectured at conservatories in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. His recording career began in the LP era and includes albums for the Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, and CPO labels. Since 1999, when he backed baritones Roman Trekel and Michael Volle on, respectively, recordings of Schubert's Winterreise, D. 911, and Schwanengesang, D. 957, he has been associated with Naxos. Those releases marked the beginning of the Deutsche Schubert Lied Edition, a 35-volume compilation of Schubert's complete songs, which featured various German singers and appeared over the first years of the 21st century, concluding in 2011. Eisenlohr served as the project's artistic director. Eisenlohr is a frequent guest at festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the International Beethoven Festival Bonn, and the Edinburgh Festival, and he has appeared at many of Europe's top concert halls. In 2014, he became a professor and later vice dean at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where he founded the German Song Academy, a summer program that brings together leading accompanists to train young singers and musicians in the lieder repertory. He has continued to record for Naxos, and in 2021, he launched a new complete cycle of Brahms songs on the label, backing Prégardien on the first volume. ~ James Manheim, Rovi