Axel Bauni

About Axel Bauni

Contemporary music is of special interest to the pianist Axel Bauni, who, after having studied lieder interpretation with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann, is internationally active as accompanist to artists, such as Juliane Banse, Claudia Barainsky, Stella Doufexis, Christine Schäfer, Dietrich Henschel, Thomas Quasthoff, and Yaron Windmüller. Alongside his being an interpreter and/or initiator of numerous premières by Aribert Reimann, Hans Werner Henze, Hans-Jürgen von Bose, Matthias Pintscher, and Wolfgang Rihm, among others, Axel Bauni is responsible for projects like a series of lieder recitals called Lied des 20. Jahrhunderts at the MusikTriennale in Cologne in 2000 and the artistic directorship of the festival Lied:Strahl in the German Pavilion at EXPO 2000 in Hanover. Axel Bauni has recorded numerous CDs with lieder, including works by Ernst Krenek, Hans Pfitzner, and Viktor Ullmann. Along with Aribert Reimann, he is coeditor and pianist of the CD series on Orfeo, edition zeitgenössisches lied. From 1988 to 1993 he was assistant to Aribert Reimann at the Hochschule (now Universität) der Künste Berlin. Since then, he has taught continuously and given master classes in Germany and abroad, including the Banff Center in Canada, the Folkwang-Hochschule Essen, the conservatories of Hamburg, Saarbrücken, and Würzburg, and the Conservatoire de Lausanne. In 2003 he was appointed professor and director of an interpretation class for contemporary lieder for singers and pianists at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In that context Axel Bauni founded the Liedforum Berlin, at which students and teachers from various lieder classes in German European universities come together for exchange and collaborative work.