CHRISTIANE BEHN comes from a Hamburg family of musicians and composers.
Her first piano lessons began at the age of five with her grandfather and later with Gisela Stumme from Conrad Hansen’s school. At the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg she studied with the professors Jürgen Hofer, Yara Bernette, Elgin Roth and Conrad Hansen and completed her concert exam with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the large Laeiszhalle.
During her studies, Christiane Behn was Yara Bernette’s assistant for two years with a temporary lectureship at this university.
Since her concert exams, she has been a sought-after soloist, song accompanist and chamber musician with concerts and master classes in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, Chile, Nepal, China, England, France, Holland, Italy and Austria.
In Germany she has performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, at the Braunschweig Chamber Music Podium, in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, in the Old Opera in Frankfurt, at Schloss Elmau and in the large and small halls of the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg. In the large Laeiszhalle she performed Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 and in the crypt of St. Michael’s Church Franz Schubert’s Winterreise with Iris Vermillion.
Set in versions for 2 pianos by her great-granduncle Hermann Behn, she and her duo partners play Gustav Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and excerpts from Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde in Bayreuth, in the EnsembleResonance media bunker, in the Klangmanufaktur and at the Liszt Festival in Provence.
Since 2010, Christiane Behn has been a lecturer at the Hamburg Conservatory with its own piano class for students and gifted students from the Hans Kauffmann Foundation. She also teaches for the youth chamber music initiative, Feldtmann Kulturell, in Hamburg. Her jury work at the Steinway Competition as well as the state and national competition “Jugend musiziert”, her multiple invitations for master classes in Mexico, the Panama Multinational Conservatory of Music, the Chinese Ministry of Culture in Shanghai and England make her an experienced pedagogue – to be heard as a result of this piano pedagogical work in the large Laeiszhalle as well as in the Elbphilharmonie.
Christiane Behn has been Vice President of the Brahms Society in Hamburg since 2021.
At home she plays on two Steinway B grands from 1912 that her great-grandfather owned.