“Maybe they still do exist, the younger music professionals who have gained a following thanks to their musical talent and not because of their extra-musical tabloid antics. In a classical music industry in need of reform, Alexander Schimpf, recent winner of the Vienna Beethoven Piano Competition, could be one of these future heroes …”

Thus the Süddeutsche Zeitung after a piano recital in the Small Auditorium of the Münchner Gasteig. Ever since winning First Prize at the 2008 German Music Competition in the solo piano category and the 2009 Beethoven Competition in Vienna, Alexander Schimpf has made a particular name for himself as a promising young talent in more frequent concert appearance in Germany and abroad.

Born in Göttingen, Germany in 1981, he initially studied piano with Wolfgang Manz in Hanover and subsequently attended the Musikhochschule Dresden with Winfried Apel as well as with Bernd Glemser in Würzburg. The pianists Cécile Ousset and Janina Fialkowska also played an important role in his artistic development.

His career has already taken him to many concert halls and festivals throughout Germany (including Gasteig and Munich’s Allerheiligen-Hofkirche (“All Saints’ Court Chapel”), the Musikund Kongresshalle Lübeck, Elmau Castle, Hanover’s NDR broadcasting studio, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, Oberstdorfer Musiksommer, and Heidelberger Frühling) as well as to France (Auditorium du Louvre and Salle Cortot in Paris), Italy, Austria, Switzerland and England, and to South America

for the first time in 2010. His concert performances have been recorded, among others, by the three German broadcasters BR, NDR and SWR, Austria's ORF and Radio France.

His first CD was co-produced by Deutschlandradio Kultur and GENUIN, and was released in June 2010.