“On days when everything is going well, the sound and response of a Steinway allows and invites me to give full reign to my imagination. On days when everything is going wrong, and the world seems to conspire against every note, a Steinway is my only friend in the world!”

Karl Lutchmayer

Karl Lutchmayer is renowned as a concert pianist and lecturer. A Steinway Artist, Karl performs across the globe, and has worked with conductors including Lorin Maazel and Sir Andrew Davis, and performed at all the major London concert halls. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, All India Radio and Classic FM, and is a regular chamber performer. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Karl has also given over 90 world premieres and had many works written especially for him.

Karl’s London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, has garnered critical and public acclaim, and following his landmark recitals celebrating the Liszt and Alkan Bicentenaries, he has received invitations from 4 continents to give lecture recitals. Karl also holds an academic lectureship at Trinity Laban and is a regular guest lecturer at conservatoires around the world, including the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools in New York.

In recent years Karl has focussed much of his time and attention on nurturing the burgeoning Western Classical music scene in India, his family home. There, as well as helping young musicians and music teachers to fulfil their potential, he has also been involved in audience creation projects in many of the major cities. It was for this work that he was awarded the Bharat Gaurav (Pride of India) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

Karl studied at the Junior Department of Trinity College of Music, then at the Royal College of Music under Peter Wallfisch and John Barstow, where he also studied fugue and counterpoint with Edwin Roxburgh. He undertook further studies with Lev Naumov at the Moscow Conservatoire and with Martino Tirimo. His research interests include the music of Liszt, Alkan, Busoni and Enescu; The Creative Transcription Network; reception theory, and the history of piano recital programming. 

Karl resides in London, where he is sometimes spotted in his alternative incarnation as keyboard, percussion and theremin player in the prog rock band The Connoisseur. Continually challenging tired expectations and reinvigorating jaded palettes, his dynamic recitals inspire colleagues, seasoned concert-goers and new audiences alike, whilst his pioneering Conversational Concerts draw audiences into the very heart of the music. A writer as well - with a column in Time Out that makes even the most thorny musicological problems seem instantly approachable - Karl Lutchmayer’s 360° approach to musical artistry is truly redefining the nature of the 21st-Century musician.