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The German pianist and composer, Friedrich Höricke, played at the age of 11 his first solo recital in Cologne. and fascinated his audience with virtuoso and surprisingly mature Frédéric Chopin playing. Already at the age of 13 he was admitted as the youngest student in the master-class by Günter Ludwig at the Musikhochschule Köln. At the same time he attended the Kölner Apostelgymnasium. At 18, he won First Prize at the Tomassoni-Wettbewerb der Musikhochschule Köln, as well as a prize at the Busoni International Piano Competition. It was followed by further training at the renowned Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, USA, where he studied with renowned pianists as Seymour Lipkin, Jorge Bolet, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Gary Graffman (a pupil of Vladimir Horowitz), and. Marian Filar (a pupil of Walter Gieseking), receiving guidance in all areas of pianistic mastery. With a brilliant final exams, he left the Curtis Institute in 1984 and won the First Prize of the Philadelphia Young Artists Competition, and another at the Liszt Competition.
Friedrich Höricke has had concert engagements in America, Asia, Western, Central and Eastern Europe, and who returned to his hometown in 1992, with an international presence. His CD releases have recived an enthusiastic press response. The latest CD "Love & Passion" with carefully selected works which unfold under the substantive form of love and passion played by Höricke with his fascination game appeare in March 1999 on East-West Records. The Wiener Philharmoniker chose Höricke as soloist for their European tour in April 1999.
Focus of the repertoire of Friedrich Höricke lies in the German and Slavic piano music. With refreshing clarity, brilliance, elegance, playful and passionate verve he brings new lights for the sounds of romantic piano literature. The inexhaustible wealth of expressive nuance of the pianist makes his feature soulfulness and vitality. With sharp musical intellect and instinct, he tracks down and brings the motivic links with virtuosity and transparency to life. Frederick Höricke sees himself in the tradition of the great pianists of the 19th Century. "We, the musicians were in the 19th century the rock stars, they came to us in droves and we were idolized. If we lost this role, this is primarily our own fault by the scientific transformation of the music.. the second half of the 20th century we have lost our claim universal validity." Himself a great admirer of pianists like Ignaz Friedman, Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alfred Cortot et al, Höricke has calculated faithfulness or external virtuosity prescribed: Direct Communication in the concert hall and the transfer of enthusiasm for a concert audience are the essence of his pianistic activity.
Apart from his activity bas a concert pianist, Friedrich Höricke has increasingly composed his own music for piano or for piano and orchestra. As a composer and pianist he feels commited to the tradition of the great composer-pianists. He tries to absorb their traditions and to integrate both his own piano works and transcriptions of other works in his own concert programs. So sometimes one car hear in his concerts suite from the Stone Flower, Prokofiev's last ballet. In 2004, his Piano Concerto was premiered at the Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg.
In 1985 Frederick Höricke married the sexual scientist Shere Hite in New York, lived they shared in an apartment on 5th Avenue. Later Höricke and Hite moved to Germany, where she took an apartment in Cologne. The couple divorced in 1999. Höricke is married to Astrid von Platen-Höricke since 2004 and lives in Senzke in Brandenburg. Since June 1, 2010 he is Managing Director of Schloss Ribbeck GmbH. |
