Margarita Höhenrieder, an outstanding pianist from Munich, is highly respected among experts. She has been invited to perform as a soloist by the conductors Kirill Petrenko, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, James Levine, Fabio Luisi, Lorin Maazel as well as by renowned orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Staatskapelle of Dresden, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the NewYork Philharmonic.
Playing the piano has been second nature to her since her childhood. Fascinated by her mother's playing when she was a little girl, she began having lessons with the renowned piano teacher Anna Stadler in Munich at the age of five. She took part in her first competition at the age of seven and won first prize at the national"Jugendmusiziert" competitionwhen shewas ten.Margarita Höhenrieder gave her first piano recital at the age of eleven andmade her first recording when she was thirteen. In the following years she was awarded numerous prizes at international competitions.
In 1981 she won first prize at the prestigious Busoni Competition in Bolzano, thus joining the ranks of pianists like Martha Argerich and Jörg Demus.Her career then increasingly took her to the world's major musical centres, including Berlin,Munich, Paris, Rome, Salzburg,Mexico City and New York. She went on to perform at many music festivals and to record on vinyl and later on CD. In 1984 she celebrated her very successful debut at the Carnegie Hall in New York.
After having studied with Ludwig Hoffmann at the Munich College of Music,Margarita Höhenrieder was awarded a scholarship to study in the USA by the Deutsche Studienstiftung and the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst - an exchange programme), and she studied with Leon Fleisher in Baltimore for two years.
She is open-minded about contemporary music like the works of Harald Genzmer, Ulrich Stranz and Wilhelm Killmayer. She premiered the Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings Genzmer dedicated to her and recorded it on CD. He also dedicated his last great oeuvre, a farewell fantasy called "Like A Dream At The Rim Of Infinity" to the artist, who performed its première together with the Berlin Philharmonics' solo flutist Emmanuel Pahud in Rome in the year 2009.
Besides Mozart and Beethoven, Romanticism is Margarita's greatest love. Her fascination with the mutual inspiration of Clara and Robert Schumann, both artists and married couple, has caused her to publish both of her piano concertos in a-minor together on one CD with the BMG/RCA company.
Margarita Höhenrieder also owes some essential musical inspiration to her friendship and co-operation with Alfred Brendel. In November 2008 the press summed up as follows after a concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Claudio Abbado:
"(...) The Concerto for piano and orchestra A major K488 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was completely different. (...) Here Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra were able to count on an exceptional Margarita Höhenrieder.A soloist of the highest rank, an early talent completely confirmed as she matures."
"(...) She showed herself to be a performer of great emotional power. Her sensitivity of touch and the personality which she gave to the solo passages made her the absolute heroine of the concerto, enthusiastically applauded by the audience."
Paolo Borgugnone,music critic in "I Teatri, Cultura e Spettacoli"
In September 2014 Margarita Höhenrieder had a reunion with her former teacher Leon Fleisher on the podium: Leon Fleisher as the conductor and Margarita Höhenrieder as the soloist for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Zollverein world heritage site in Essen. Following its success they performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 together in October 2015 inBad Kissingen. In the coming years, all of Beethoven´s piano concertos shall be performed and recorded at exceptional locations.