Axel Bauni
Axel Bauni was born in the city of Ludwigshafen on the Rhine and studied at the University of Music in Mannheim/Heidelberg and at the University of the Arts in Berlin. His strongest motivation comes from song interpretation courses taught by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann. Today he enjoys an international reputation as a pianist and song interpreter with a special interest in twentieth and twenty-first century song.
Axel Bauni has accompanied singers such as Juliane Banse, Claudia Barainsky, Stella Doufexis, Mojca Erdmann, Christine Schäfer, Doris Soffel, Thomas Quasthoff and Yaron Windmüller. Together with them he participated in début performances of songs by contemporary composers including Aribert Reimann, Hans Werner Henze, Hans- Jürgen von Bose, Matthias Pintscher and Wolfgang Rihm. He has designed and managed important projects such as the series of song evenings on the Lied des 20. Jahrhunderts (Song of the Twentieth Century) at the MusikTriennale in Cologne in 2000 and, together with Yaron Windmüller, the festival Lied: Strahl at the German Pavillon at EXPO 2000 in Hanover. Since 2004 he has been responsible for the annual Reichenhaller Liederwerkstatt at the Alpneklassik festival, which, with numerous first performances, focuses mainly on contemporary song. In 2003, as Aribert Reimann’s successor, he became professor and head of an interpretation class focusing on contemporary song at the University of the Arts in Berlin and founded the Liedforum Berlin, bringing together in September 2004, students and professors of different song classes from German universities and in October 2006 from European universities. Apart from his active artistic and pedagogic work, Axel Bauni dedicates his time to editorial activities. He co-published the volume Sämtliche Lieder by Viktor Ullmann for Schott, which received the German Music Edition Prize in 2005.
