Music

Markus Schirmer’s home is classical music. This is where he draws his qualification for excursions to other worlds of sound and style.

When Schirmer is studying a composition he first examines the period the composer lived in, his life and his works and tries to divine what could have inspired the composer during his lifetime. His maxim: no interpreter should try to be wiser than Mozart, Beethoven and their peers.

The secret of musical depth is not to construe interpretations of presumed intentions but to study the music thoroughly and painstakingly. Schirmer: “ Whatever a composer wanted to tell us, he wrote down on paper. This applies to both the notes as, above all, to the rests”. Chamber music is a matter of especially great concern to him: there is a great deal to be learned from it: to find mutual breathing, an ideal sound for oneself and in a group. The main task, however, Markus Schirmer sees in striving for subtle and perfect sound: to investigate every detail – even the minutest variance of character- to create an individual color or hue.