Gerhard Oppitz is a German pianist. He was born on February 5, 1953, in Frauenau, Bavaria, Federal Republic of Germany.
He began studying music at the age of five and gave his first concert at the age of ten. He studied in Stuttgart under Paul Buck, and later at the Munich Higher School of Music with Wilhelm Kempff and Hugo Steurer.
In 1981 he became the youngest professor in the history of his alma mater, where he has continued to teach. He also succeeded his teacher Kempff as head of the summer piano courses in Positano, Italy, which had been founded by Kempff.
Oppitz won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Israel in 1977. As a performer, he is known for his preference for concert cycles built around complete collections of piano works by a single composer.
Over the years he has performed the piano music of Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Edvard Grieg, and has also played all the sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Among his recordings, his performance of Max Reger's piano concerto with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Horst Stein is especially noted.
In 2009 he was awarded the Brahms Prize.
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