Born in 1987 in Ludwigshafen, Joseph Moog started sitting down regularly at the piano when he was four. At the age of ten he was accepted as a young student at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, before going on to study in Würzburg and Hannover. Moog has a fine sense for combining repertoire. He places well-loved pieces alongside rare niche findings, searching for new insight and thereby throwing a different light on familiar music – for instance, when he places shining gems of the Late Baroque period such as Domenico Scarlatti’s brief sonatas alongside piano transcriptions and arrangements from the 19th century, or when, instead of pairing the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Schumann Concerto, he chooses to feature Moritz Moszkowski instead: a true discovery. Moog has twice won the International Classical Music Award (ICMA); in 2009 he was selected as a Young Steinway Artist. He has garnered further international prizes such as the 2015 Gramophone Classical Music Award as Young Artist of the Year, followed by a 2016 Grammy nomination. Moog is featured in several instances on CDs of the Edition Ruhr Piano Festival: for instance, on Vol. 35 with Max Reger’s Telemann Variations. Volume 32 includes an entire CD performed by Moog, with works by Liszt, Debussy, and others. He guested at the Ruhr Piano Festival for the 5th time in 2017.

Severin von Eckardstein, one of the leading German pianists of his generation, has delighted the public with many highly acclaimed concerts, e.g. in Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Budapest, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. His talent could be enjoyed at renown music festivals, including Ruhr Piano Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Miami International Piano Festival, where he played the opening concert in 2009.

He has performed with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and Marek Janowski, and made important debuts, among others in 2007 (Amsterdam under Paavo Järvi), Dallas (under Jaap van Zweden), Budaypest (under Zsolt Hamar). During the European lockdown in November 20 he debuted with Mariinsky Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev) and the Ural Philhamonic in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
As a frequent guest of the concert series Meesterpianisten at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, he was reinvited to this extraordinary series for the 8th time in 2020.
Von Eckardstein won prizes at numerous noteworthy international competitions, e.g. Ferruccio Busoni in Bozen (1998), Leeds International Piano Competition (2000), ARD-Competition in Munich (1999) and was awarded first prize at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels (2003).
Musically educated by Prof. Barbara Szczepanska, Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Prof. Klaus Hellwig and at the International Piano Academy Lake Como, he himself has been serving as master class instructor on many occasions, among others in South Korea, Finland, Belgium and at the UdK, Berlin.
In 2015 he founded the chamber concert series Klangbrücken at Konzerthaus Berlin together with violinist Franziska Hölscher.
CD recordings with compositions by Medtner, Scriabin, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy and others are highly regarded. His latest album of Dupont´s cycle La maison dans les dunes was awarded with Diapason d´Or.

Ya-Fei Chuang made her first television appearance in her native Taiwan at the age of eight. The bursary of scholarships from several prestigious foundations, Ms. Chang moved to Germany to study at the conservatories of Freiburg and Cologne. In Cologne she won the conservatory’s International Piano Competition when she was eighteen. Later she relocated in the US and concluded her studies at New England Conservatory in Boston. Ya-Fei Chuang now gives masterclasses in the US, Europe and Asia – for instance at Tanglewood Music Festival and at the Salzburg Mozarteum International Summer Academy. She has performed at all the major festivals and concertizes with the most renowned orchestras worldwide. A great number of CD recordings demonstrate her virtuosity, paired with a particularly intense variety of musical expression. For instance, Vol. 23 of the Edition Klavier-Festival Ruhr features Ms. Chuang’s recordings of two Mendelssohn piano concertos with Robert Levin and the Bochum Symphony. Ya-Fei Chuang appears in chamber music recitals with cellist Steven Isserlis, violist Kim Kashkashian and pianist Robert Levin. After having given her Ruhr Piano Festival début performance in 2007, she returned here for her 8th appearance in 2015.

Robert Levin studied with Stefan Wolpe in New York and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Upon graduation he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to head the theory department of the Curtis Institute of Music; Levin was also Resident Director of the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau from 1979 to 1986 before taking up a professorship in the piano department of Freiburg Musikhochschule. He is President of the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, and currently Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. As a result of intense study of the original sources, Levin has published scholarly and musically well-informed completions of a number of works left unfinished by Mozart: for instance, the Requiem and the Mass in C Minor. He has performed worldwide and has made a number of recordings, including complete cycles of the Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos. Robert Levin is one of those rare double musical talents who are truly capable of combining theory and practice. More than just a piano-playing musicologist or a theorizing instrumentalist, Levin invariably merges virtuoso aplomb with well-informed scholarship in performances that captivate audiences far and wide. That has also clearly been the case in the great number of concerts, recitals and lectures Levin has given at the Ruhr Piano Festival ever since his first appearance here in 2006.

Known for captivating interpretations of a wide repertoire, Tamara Stefanovich performs at the world’s major concert venues including Carnegie Hall New York, Berlin Philharmonie, Suntory Hall Tokyo and London’s Royal Albert and Wigmore Halls. She features in international festivals such as La Roque d’Antheron, Ravenna, Salzburger Festspiele, Styriarte Graz and Beethovenfest Bonn. Stefanovich has appeared with orchestras including The Cleveland and Chicago Symphonies, London Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras, Bamberger Symphoniker, Britten Sinfonia, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Swedish Chamber Orchestra.

Tamara Stefanovich has collaborated with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Osmo Vänskä and Susanna Mälkki, as well as leading composers including Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös and György Kurtág. She regularly leads educational projects at London’s Barbican Centre, Kölner Philharmonie and at Klavier-Festival Ruhr such as the innovative online project of interactive pedagogical analyses Boulez’ Notations: www.explorethescore.org. Tamara is cofounder and curator of a newly created festival “The Clearing” at Portland International Piano Series.