Biography
Camilla Köhnken studied piano with Pierre–Laurent Aimard (Cologne), Jerome Rose (New York), and Claudio Martínez Mehner (Basel) and took additional lessons with musicians like Claude Frank (Verbier) and Ferenc Rados (Prussia Cove/Lenk/Basel).
She played solo concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Palacio de Festivales, Santander, or the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. Additionally, she is regularly performing on fortepianos, often in her position as “pianist-in-residence” at the Beethovenhaus Bonn (Conrad Graf of 1824; John Broadwood of 1817) which she holds since 1999.
From early on, Camilla combined her solo career with frequent chamber music projects in different formations, covering a wide-ranging repertoire. Since 2011, she often performs with saxophonist Pedro Cámara Toldos (Ivory & Reed) and since with 2012 with David da Silva, clarinet and Adam Newman, viola (Philon Trio) as well as with Swiss cellist Chiara Enderle (see Recordings).
In 2018, she completed a doctorate on interpretation strategies of Franz Liszt and his circle at the University of Bern/Hochschule der Künste Bern, Switzerland, as part of Kai Köpp’s research group on 19th century Instructive Editions. 2019 – 2022, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Tom Beghin in his project “Declassifying the Classics” at Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium.
At present, she conducts her piano, teaching, and research projects from Vienna where she also works as lecturer at the Universität für Musik darstellende Kunst (mdw).