Website Tobias Bigger

Welcome to my Website

..., a website about a pianist who — for about four decades — engaged himself particularly in music aside the usual, well-established contents of today's concert programmes and recordings and who gave special focus to this commitment in all his pianistic activities, including a multitude of
premiere recordings.

As of March, 2022, I unfortunately have to state that my pianistic activities have come to an end, which you might have already deduced from the use of the past tense in the introductory sentence, above.
This is due to problems concerning my muscles that seem to be very uncommon and neither could get any classification nor therapy. Further professional pianistic work with its corresponding muscular strain is no longer reliably possible for me.

The problems arose within a very brief span in mid-April 2021, and moreover just prior to solo piano recordings which at that time had been scheduled for the following week in Wuppertal (Germany) and which I had to cancel.
The planned recording programme had my special appreciation and realized a thematic idea that I had already contemplated for around 20 years. Incidentally, it also contained a number of my own, yet non-recorded piano arrangements.

Initially, I hoped for the problems being a temporary, recoverable illness, and therefore tried to make the best possible use of the delay imposed on my plans by working on a further solo piano project that I had intended to be the next programme to be recorded (after the now failed recordings). The idea for that further project had also been present in my plans for already a number of years.

As I meanwhile have to assume that the realization of the mentioned two CD programmes is denied to me (as well as all other such plans), I have decided to publish their already finished booklets, and thereby also their programme concepts; you can find the booklets here, on the sub-page dedicated to my solo recordings.
It is particularly bitter that, in the case of the “Songs without Singers” project, there was only a good week separating me from the finished recordings which meanwhile would have been published as my 7th CD/SACD release.

Publishing the two booklets is unusual, as they don’t represent finished recordings, but only their detailed plans.
But my intention in doing this is to utilise the extensive planning and preparation work at least to a certain extent and thus bring it to a kind of completion; albeit unfortunately no longer the normal completion in the form of a finished recording.
Additionally, I know that some people not only esteemed my piano playing as such, but also my CD project concepts as being deliberately set apart from the ordinary and familiar (Donald Manildi might be especially mentioned here, as an example being particularly honourable for me). Some visitors to this website therefore may enjoy these two incomplete projects under this aspect, too.

Incidentally, the format of the two booklets is based on the design of the booklet of my Leschetizky recording (BIS 2518), especially because I would certainly have offered the two projects to the BIS label again, for publication after completion of editing/mastering.
My booklet texts, however, are only available in German since the later translation by a publishing label of course doesn’t exist and I myself didn’t bother to translate them at least into English, for which I ask you to bear with me.

This website may continue to exist as a potential source of information, as it has been the case with the parallel website for the roughly 10 years of my former duo collaboration with violinist Inna Kogan.

I would like to thank everyone who was interested in my pianistic work!