Christiane Behn – Concert Pianist and Piano Pedagogue

Christiane Behn smiling at an open grand piano

About

Christiane Behn began studying the piano at the age of five under the guidance of her grandfather. She went on to study at the University of Music and Theatre Hamburg, where her teachers included Yara Bernette, Elgin Roth, and Conrad Hansen. She completed her advanced artistic training with the Konzertexamen, Germany’s highest postgraduate performance qualification, performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the Grand Hall of Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle.

As a solo pianist, Lied accompanist, and chamber musician, Christiane Behn maintains an active international concert career and gives masterclasses throughout Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Her performance venues and festival appearances include the Berlin Philharmonie, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

Her artistic work is documented in numerous recordings, available on major streaming platforms. Her repertoire spans works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Debussy, alongside an extensive selection of chamber music and ambitious arrangements for two pianos. These include Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, as well as Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, in Hermann Behn’s two-piano arrangement. Hermann Behn was an ancestor of the pianist.

Since 2013, she has organized the Hamburger Montagssalon, an initiative she founded to bring chamber music into dialogue with broader artistic, cultural, and social questions. Her connection to her family’s musical heritage is also reflected in two Steinway Model B grand pianos with consecutive serial numbers, acquired by her great-grandfather in 1912.

Christiane Behn leaning on the grand piano

Teaching

Since 2010, Christiane Behn has been a member of the faculty at the Hamburger Konservatorium, where she leads her own piano studio and mentors students and exceptionally gifted young pianists, including scholarship recipients of the Hans Kauffmann Foundation. Her commitment to nurturing emerging talent also finds expression in her work as a jury member for Steinway competitions and Jugend musiziert, at both regional and national levels, as well as in her teaching at international masterclasses.

Her pedagogical approach combines rigorous pianistic training with a profound understanding of musical interpretation and individual expression. At its heart lies the development of an independent artistic voice, supported by technical mastery, refined tone production, and musical nuance.

Testimonials

Christiane Behn and Emiliano Ramniceanu at the piano — Photo: Antonia Elberg

Christiane Behn with a young pianist at the grand piano on the stage of the Elbphilharmonie

Christiane Behn is one of the people I admire most in my life! Her extraordinary creativity and expressiveness in her musical ideas make her the kind of pianist I always strive to become. Beyond these qualities, she also possesses an extensive knowledge of how the human body works to produce the desired sound. Her lessons have been among the most important learning experiences of my life, shaping me not only as a pianist and an artist, but also as a human being.

Emiliano Ramniceanu, pianist, former student and duo partner from Venezuela