Christian Zacharias

Born in India in 1950, German pianist Christian Zacharias began his solo career in 1975 after winning the Ravel Competition in Paris. A pupil of Vlado Perlemuter and Second Prize winner at the Geneva and Van Cliburn competitions in the USA, he specialized in the Romantic repertoire, recording works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin, as well as Scarlatti and Ravel. In 1992, he embarked on a career as a conductor that would later lead him to play with and conduct the Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne and to take charge of the Mozart Festival in Barcelona. A renowned interpreter of Mozart's Piano Concertos, the complete works of which he recorded in a boxed set in 2015, Zacharias has won an ECHO Award three years running (2008 to 2010).