Alexander Maria Wagner has been commissioned by the Telekom Beethoven Competition to write a work for 8 pianists and percussion, which was premiered at the Piano Summit on 16 October 2021.
Alexander Maria Wagner (*1995) studied piano and composition with Franz Hummel and Tristan Murail. He is currently working with pianist Pavel Gililov at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where he studied composition. Since September 2019, he has been continuing his studies at the renowned Royal College of Music in London. For this he received the Leverhulme Arts Scholarship.
In addition to numerous performances in Germany (Herkulessaal and Gasteig Munich, Beethoven-Haus and Beethovenfest Bonn, Karlshalle Ansbach, Audimax Regensburg, Max-Reger-Halle Weiden etc.), his concert activities have also taken him abroad (Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Italy, France and the USA).
He composed his first symphony, entitled "KRAFTWERK", at the age of 14. This youthful orchestral work immediately inspired the then chief conductor of the Bulgarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Alexei Kornienko, so much that he recorded it on CD with his orchestra in Sofia for Oehms Classics. Renowned radio and television stations such as BR, WDR, Deutschlandradio Kultur and 3Sat have also broadcast portraits of Alexander M. Wagner.
Ingo Harden writes in Fono Forum about his second CD with piano works by Bach, Schumann and one of his own compositions: "...amazes from the first to the last bars with the undisguised directness of the playing and the clear, self-assured decisiveness of the statement". / "... grabs hold with tremendous power and temperament, shapes excitingly "finished" and striking, masters the many pianistic and musical hurdles with an overrunning bravura, as if they did not exist at all."
He made his solo debut at Munich's Herkulessaal in January 2016. In spring 2017, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra recorded his Second Symphony and Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with him as soloist. Last autumn, Wagner made his debut with the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra. Shortly afterwards, a composition scholarship from the Virginia Creative Center of Arts, received for his Viennese operetta "Café Ringelspiel", took him to the USA for several months.