Research

Part One: Written Correspondence
(1) Feel free to sport your doctoral degree in your email signature module, letterhead, or address stamp.
(2) State your doctoral degree in the displayed sender name of your email account, if you really do consider it necessary.
(3) Refrain from including your doctoral degree, or any abbreviation of it, in your email address, such as philip.dee.phd@ac.edu or dr.donald.rump@cumbridge.pov.jiz. If at all possible, also avoid writing it on envelopes by hand.
(4) Do not, by all means, sign your correspondence with your doctoral degree attached to your name, regardless of how cordially, sincerely, or respectfully you choose to express your salutation. Your conversation partner will appreciate your modesty. Thanks for your attention.

I wrote a few lines on the questionable tendency in classical music journalism to refer to performers as ›geniuses‹ and to conductors as ›maestri‹. Not that anybody asked for my opinion, and I guess that some of you don’t care at all—but that’s exactly why I felt the need to express my uneasiness with that matter. Out now in VAN Magazin. Your thoughts are appreciated.

The latest issue of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (#1 / 2019) features an article and interview by Anna Schürmer on the relationship of social media and contemporary music, with noteworthy statements by Moritz Eggert, Johannes Kreidler, Irene Kurka, and Martin Tchiba, and also including a few thoughts on digital communication and publication from my humble perspective. Thanks for providing the platform!

Excited to share with you the latest results of my comparatively rare (but however passionate) activity as a performer. Here are two documents of my involvement with Nikolai Medtner‘s piano and chamber music, taken from a concert in November 2018 at Villa Oppenheim Berlin, which formed part of the first-ever festival in Germany exclusively dedicated to that composer. Both pieces belong, in my opinion, to the foremost achievements of Medtner’s musical expression: The Sonata-Vocalise, Op. 41 No. 1, an outstanding example of his treatment of the textless voice, holds a unique position in genre history, whereas the Sonata-Elegy, Op. 11 No. 2, pioneers in terms of formal architecture and thus stands out from most other single-movement piano sonatas of the early twentieth century. Since these are live recordings with only a few minor edits and digital improvements, the outcome is far from being technically perfect. Nonetheless I feel lucky to underpin my research on Medtner with a thorough interpretive approach to his music, and I am particularly grateful to soprano Anna Hofmann who, through her beautiful performance, made this concert one of my dearest memories on stage. Hope you will enjoy this as much as I did.