Oliver KernCurriculum Vitae

Oliver Kern was born in 1970 in Schwäbisch Gmünd,Germany, and there he began studying piano at the age of5. His artistic activity started when he was very young, andhe stood out in the German musical scene for his brilliantresults in international piano contests. He graduated witha first-class degree in piano, orchestra conducting andchorus conducting from the Staatliche Hochschule fürMusik in Stuttgart, under the guidance of Wan Ing Ong. Hewent on to specialize in piano with Rudolf Buchbinder andKarl-Heinz Kämmerling, at the Musik-Akademie in Baseland at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.He has won a great number of awards in internationalpiano competitions: first and second prizes in theinternational competitions of Senigallia, Hamamatsu,Peking and Paris. He has drawn the attention of critics bywinning two prestigious competitions: the “ARD”award(prize) in Munich, in 1999, and the “Beethoven”award(prize) in Vienna, in 2001, when he was the firstGerman pianist to have won this award; in the latter healso received the special award for the best performance ofBeethoven’s sonatas. He is much appreciated for hisperformance of Beethoven’s and Brahms’ music; the criticsrecognise his merit of possessing a technical virtuosity thatis not an end in itself, but is oriented to a thoroughresearch of timbre and expression. His profoundinterpretation has led him to the realisation of rare culturalprojects such as the performance of Brahms’ completeoperas for piano solo in the Classix Festival Braunschweig:“With great intensity and poetry Oliver Kern is modellingthe Brahms cycle.” (Braunschweiger Zeitung). He has performed in important festivals and in famoushalls in America, Asia and Europe, and has been acclaimedby all his audiences: Musikverein and Konzerthaus Wien,Schauspielhaus Berlin, Musikhalle Hamburg, HerkulessaalMunich, Salle Gaveau Paris, Auditorium St. Cecilia Rome,Century Hall Beijing , Saitama Arts Centre Tokyo, Seoul

Arts Center. He has played with famous orchestrasincluding the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, theSeoul Symphony Orchestra, the China National SymphonyOrchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Berlin,Munich, Hannover and Vienna, conducted by DennisRussell Davies, Michael Stern, Lu Jia, Marc Soustrot,Gerard Oskamp and Dmitri Yablonski. He has recorded forthe German, Austrian, French, Italian and Japanese radioand television. With the label “Realsound” he has publishedCD’s with solo works written by Beethoven, Brahms,Chopin, Ravel, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin, Stravinsky. After having taught at the Hanyang University Seoul,College of Music, as professor for piano since 2008 OliverKern is teaching at the Hochschule für Musik und TheaterHamburg as professor for piano.