Biography
Ingrid Maria Jacoby, piano
Ingrid Jacoby, internationally acclaimed as both as a recording and performing artist, was awarded a Career Life Award by the National Society of Arts and Letters in the United States. She was inducted in the same ceremony as Shirley MacLaine and Jessye Norman.
Ms Jacoby, a “Steinway Artist,” is a member of The Steinway Hall of Fame, and she has recorded for its new Steinway Label in Hamburg, Germany.
Ms Jacoby has won numerous awards, including the Artists Presentation Award, the Steinway Hall Artists Prize, the Baldwin National Piano Competition, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, and the gold prize at the Concert Artists Guild Award, in a field of over 1,300 entrants. This resulted in a highly successful debut recital at Carnegie Hall.
Ms Jacoby was awarded a gold medal from the Monaco Dante Alighieri Society after her successful recital in Monte Carlo.
Ms Jacoby, who is a triple United States, United Kingdom, and German citizen, has performed at many London venues and with many orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the London Mozart Players. She has worked with such eminent conductors as Sir Charles MacKerras, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Neville Marriner, Jane Glover, Vasily Petrenko, Dimitri Sitkovetsky, Constantine Orbelian, Nicholas Collon, Walter Susskind, Jacek Kaspcyk, and Lord (Yehudi) Menuhin. Enthusiastic notices have followed concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Fairfield Hall, Cadogan Hall, and St John’s Smith Square. Ms Jacoby has performed at Mansion House for the Lord Mayor, as well as in the presence of HRH The Prince and Princess of Wales at Apsley House.
In addition to her performances at top music festivals, such as Aspen and Aldeburgh, Ms. Jacoby has also played Mozart concerti both at Italy’s most prestigious festival, the Ravello Festival, and at the Salzburg Music Festival in the Mozarteum.
Ingrid Jacoby’s recordings include
— Mozart’s piano concertos numbers 3, 9, and 12 with Luigi Piovano and the Orchestra da Camera di Santa Cecilia recorded at the Parco della Musica, Rome, and due for release in 2022
— Mozart’s piano concertos numbers 1, 17, and 20 with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London
— Mozart’s piano concertos numbers 21 and 23, and the concert rondo in A major, with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London
—Mozart’s piano concertos numbers 14 and 27, and the concert rondo in D major, with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London
— “Ingrid Jacoby, Live at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham” a DVD including solo piano works by Mozart, Chopin and Brahms “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel
— Beethoven’s piano concertos number 1 and 3 with Jacek Kaspsyk and Sinfonia Varssovia, recorded at the concert studio of Polish Radio, Warsaw
— Beethoven’s piano concerto number 5 with Jacek Kaspysk and Sinfonia Varsovia, recorded at the concert studio of Polish Radio, Warsaw, and a reissue of other Beethoven piano works
— Beethoven’s piano concertos number 2 and 4 with Jacek Kaspysk and Sinfonia Varsovia, recorded at the concert studio of Polish Radio, Warsaw
— “A Musical Portrait” including solo piano works by Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach/Busoni recorded at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth
— Gershwin’s piano concerto in F and Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 “Age of Anxiety” with Dmitry Liss and the Russian National Orchestra recorded in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow
— Grieg’s piano concerto and Schumann’s piano concerto with Dmitry Sitkovestsky and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at Cadogan Hall, London
— Shostakovich’s piano concertos 1 and 2, and Ustvolskaya’s concerto for piano, timpani and strings with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded at Watford Town Hall, Hertfordshire, with earned the highest commendation of the American Record Guide
— “Russian Piano Music” including solo piano works by Prokoviev, Tshiakovsky, and Mussorgsky recorded at Snape Maltings, Snape near Aldeburgh, Suffolk named by one Gramophone critic as the “Pick of the Year”
— A world premiere recording of solo piano works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold recorded at Elstree Road Studios, Elstree, Hertfordshire
— Beethoven’s piano variations and bagatelles for solo piano recorded at Watford Town Hall, Herfordshire, named as a Classic FM “Top Classics Release”
As noted above, Ms Jacoby is the only pianist since Alfred Brendel to be invited by Sir Neville to record all 27 Mozart piano concerti with him. Sir Neville honoured Ms Jacoby by personally writing this in a public letter of support. (See the review section of this website.) He specifically chose his recordings with Ms Jacoby to be featured in broadcasts commemorating his 90th birthday. The first three CDs of this significant project were broadcast internationally and received the highest accolades. This series came to an end with the death of Sir Neville in 2016.
In recent years, Ms Jacoby completed a 6-city concert tour of China; played with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra at the United States embassy in Moscow; gave a recital for the Bavarian Radio in Munich; and played Chopin’s second piano concerto with the Royal Liverpool Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko. She performed with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under Nicholas Collon, with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Eiji Oue, with the Szczecin Orchestra, with the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, and with both the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. More recently she played with the chamber orchestra of La Scala, Milan (the Cameristi della Scala) under Wilson Hermanto in Grenoble.
In the Parco della Musica in Rome, Ms Jacoby performed two Mozart piano concerti with the chamber orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia under Luigi Piovano after which she made a studio recording to be released later this year.
Various, scheduled projects were adversely affected by COVID 19 and Brexit, which made a work permit necessary for Ms Jacoby to play in the EU. These difficulties are now being addressed and overcome.
Ms Jacoby comes from a family with deep musical roots. Her direct, lineal ancestor was Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772 – 1806), the pianist and composer to whom Beethoven dedicated his third piano concerto. The prince’s uncle, King Frederick the Great, composed the theme which Bach used in the sublime “A Musical Offering.”
Ms Jacoby’s great-great uncle, P S (“Benno”) Landeker (1860 – 1930), was one of the principal founders in 1882, with his business partner Hermann Wolff, of what was to become the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr Landeker was a co-owner of the original Berlin Philharmonic Hall which was destroyed during World War II. There is a charming story in the memoirs of the great cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky, describing how he was locked in that hall after a concert by mistake and passed the night sleeping in the Landeker Loge.
