Oliver Triendl

As a solo recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician, pianist Oliver Triendl has specialized in little-known repertory, most of it from the German-speaking sphere. He has a large catalog of recordings, many of them on the CPO label. Triendl was born in Mallersdorf, Bavaria, West Germany, in 1970. He took private lessons from a series of prominent teachers, including Rainer Fuchs, Karl-Heinz Diehl, Eckart Besch, Gerhard Oppitz, and Oleg Maisenberg. Prizes in various national and international competitions helped launch Triendl's career. He made his recording debut in 1992 on the Thorofon label, joining the Czech State Philharmonic Orchestra on an album that included Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 18. Triendl then recorded the Chopin and Ravel concertos for Thorofon in 1994. In 1996, he released an album of piano works by Harald Genzmer on Thorofon, and since then, he has devoted almost all of his recording career to the revival of music by neglected composers. He has devoted several albums each to Genzmer, Ludwig Thuille, Paul Juon, and Dora Pejačević; the latter was all but unknown when Triendl released an album of her chamber works on the CPO label in 2011. Triendl has been unusually energetic as a performer. He has appeared across Europe and the Americas, as well as in South Africa, Russia, Japan, India, and China. He has performed as a concerto soloist with several major German orchestras, including the Munich Philharmonic, as well as abroad with groups such as the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne, the St. Petersburg Camerata, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, several orchestras in Poland, and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg. Triendl is also an enthusiastic chamber music player whose collaborators include such world-class performers as violinist James Ehnes, clarinetist Sabine Meyer, and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. Triendl founded the Classix Kempten International Chamber Music Festival in Bavaria's Allgäu region in 2006. His efforts to record little-known material have been untiring. He appeared on seven recordings in 2022 and six in 2023 despite pandemic-era recording difficulties, and by the mid-2020s, his catalog comprised more than 100 items. ~ James Manheim, Rovi