Sabine Liebner

Interested in contemporary works, pianist Sabine Liebner has performed music by John Cage, Henry Cowell, George Crumb, Pauline Oliveros, and other avant-garde composers, many of them from the U.S. She is also a supporter of vinyl culture and has released some of her recordings in that medium. Those recordings are a distinguished group, issued on the prestigious labels Oehms Classics, NEOS, and especially Wergo. On the latter label, she released a recording of Cage's Winter Music in 2025. Liebner was born in Munich, was raised there, and continues to be based there. She grew up in a family that loved music, encouraged her curiosity about sound, gave her piano lessons, and had a large vinyl record collection. Liebner attended the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München in her hometown, studying piano with Karl-Hermann Mrongovius and taking master classes from world-renowned figures such as Leonhard Hokanson, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Maurizio Pollini, and George Crumb. Her career as a freelance pianist began in 1991, and she frequently performed at small venues in the Munich area. In 1999, she founded a Munich concert series, "Morton Feldman & Friends," which gained a cult following. An early Liebner recording was Koechlin: Chamber Music in 2000, on which she joined clarinetist Deborah Marshall and flutist Irmela Nolte. Her first solo recording was Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories (2005), which appeared on Oehms Classics. Liebner has performed with the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. She has been especially visible at festivals with an orientation toward contemporary music, appearing in 2011 at the Forum Neuer Musik in Cologne and performing John Cage's rarely heard Etudes Australes in complete form over four evenings. In addition to performing established contemporary works, Liebner has often premiered wholly new works by such major composers as Oliveros, Earle Brown, Jörg Widmann, and Christian Wolff. She released the album John Cage: Music for Piano 1-84 on NEOS in 2007 and continued to record for that label. In 2012, she moved to Wergo for a recording of Cage's Etudes Australes, and she has issued various albums on that label by such composers as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Giacinto Scelsi. In 2025, she released the album John Cage: Winter Music on Wergo. ~ James Manheim, Rovi