Ronald Brautigam

Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam divides his interpretive energies equally between the fortepiano and the conventional concert grand. Born in Amsterdam, Brautigam first studied with Dutch pianist Jan Wijn and later studies took him to the U.K. and to America, where he took classes with Rudolf Serkin. Brautigam first came to prominence in 1984 when he was awarded the Netherlands Music Prize, the highest distinction the Netherlands bestows on musicians.

Brautigam first recorded for English Decca in the 1980s, but his recording career truly got underway when he began working for the Swedish label BIS in 1995. In 1996 he recorded the entire cycle of Mozart piano sonatas on fortepiano, and since then Brautigam has recorded the concertos of Mendelssohn, the solo piano music and concertos of Franz Josef Haydn, and the complete keyboard music of Joseph Martin Kraus. He frequently collaborates with Melvyn Tan in four-hand fortepiano works, and among the chamber musicians Brautigam performs with are Isabelle van Keulen, Nobuko Imai, and Sharon Bezaly. Brautigam has appeared with the major orchestras of Europe. Although he most commonly concertizes in his native Holland and in France, Brautigam also makes occasional appearances in the United States. On February 1, 2005, Brautigam gave the world premiere in Rotterdam of an Adagio from a lost concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1789.