Born in Duesseldorf, Germany in 1978, the pianist has won prizes at numerous noteworthy international competitions, e.g. "Ferruccio Busoni" in Bozen (1998), the "Leeds International Piano Competition" (2000) and "José Iturbi" in Valencia (2002), as well as winner of the ARD-Competition in Munich (1999) and the "Grand Prix International Reine Elisabeth" in Brussels (2003). On several occasions he has been awarded special prizes for the "Best Interpretation of Contemporary Music."

 

Eckardstein’s education in the musical arts was predominately shaped by his teachers Prof. Barbara Szczepanska, Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Prof. Klaus Hellwig, University of Arts, Berlin, where he also successfully completed his concert exams. In an additional course of study at the International Piano Academy Lake Como, Italy, he profited from further instruction and inspiration. He took private lessons from teachers such as Alfred Brendel and participated in master classes instructed by Vitalij Margulis, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Alicia de Larrocha, Leon Fleisher and Menahem Pressler, to name only a few. He himself has served as master class instructor in South Korea and Finland.

 

He has delighted the public with many highly acclaimed concerts, for example in Berlin, Munich, Moscow, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. His talent could be enjoyed at great music festivals, including Klavier-Festival Ruhr, in Aldeburgh/UK, the Gilmore Festival in Michigan/USA, the renowned festival in La Roque d'Anthéron, France, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Miami International Piano Festival, where he played the opening concert in 2009. He has performed with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and Marek Janowski, and made important debuts, for example with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Beethoven Piano Concerto Nr. 5) under Paavo Järvi in 2007 and most recently - in spring 2012 - with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Prokofiev Piano Concerto Nr. 3) conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Many of Von Eckardstein’s concerts have been recorded and broadcasted by major broadcasting corporations. As a repeat guest in the concert series “Meesterpianisten” in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, von Eckardstein opened the gala concert celebrating the series’ 25th anniversary. He has been invited to reappear in 2017.



His CD recordings with compositions by Medtner, Skrjabin, Wagner, Schubert and others aroused great interest.  A Schumann CD is being under preparation and will be published in 2016.