Sabine Liebner

About Sabine Liebner

Sabine Liebner is held in high esteem throughout the world for her commitment to New Music and is one of the most important interpreters of the piano works of John Cage. Critics praise her performances as exemplary and visionary. She is a frequent guest at international festivals as a soloist and chamber musician, and her extraordinary artistic career is documented in numerous radio, television, and CD recordings.
Sabine Liebner has participated in projects with noted composers and visual artists, among them Franco Donatoni and Christian Wolff. She has been involved in the conception and planning of numerous concert programs and festivals and has premiered many new works. At the Deutschlandfunk’s Forum Neuer Musik in 2011, Liebner performed John Cage’s complete Etudes Australes over the course of four successive evenings. At the Klangspuren Schwaz and Transart festivals in 2012, she became the first performer ever to play a complete version of the work within the space of 26 hours in several different locations.
Liebner concertizes with complete performances of John Cage’s Music for Piano and Winter Music, Galina Ustvolskaya’s piano sonatas, Toshio Hosokawa’s oeuvre for piano, and Morton Feldman’s late works for piano.
Her solo repertoire includes works by Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Henry Cowell, George Crumb, Franco Donatoni, Tom Johnson, Mauricio Kagel, Helmut Lachenmann, Olivier Messiaen, Federico Mompou, Pauline Oliveros, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, nearly all of the piano works of John Cage, the complete oeuvre for piano by Morton Feldman, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Toshio Hosokawa, as well as numerous compositions by other contemporary composers.
Sabine Liebner was the Goethe Institut’s recommended German pianist in 2007 and has been the recipient of many awards including the “ffff TÉLÉRAMA” and (a number of times) the “scherzo Disco Excepcional”. Her spectacular WERGO recording of John Cage’s Etudes Australes received the “WIRE REWIND 2012” and was named CD of the Year by the listener in 2011. Her CD with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke I–XI was named one of the best recordings of 2018 by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times/Sunday Times, allmusic, and Culture Spot LA. It was also nominated for the 2018 German Record Critics’ Award 2018 and the 2019 OPUS Klassik. Her recording of Giacinto Scelsi’s Suites 8 and 11 was nominated for the OPUS Klassik in 2021.
www.msbuhl.com/SabineLiebner