Prof. Christian A. Pohl
Christian A. Pohl is one of the leading experts in piano pedagogy in the German-speaking world. He is Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig, the author of numerous specialist publications, and the founder of a systematic piano teaching method, the Pohl Method.
He completed his piano studies at the Freiburg University of Music under Felix Gottlieb, a pupil of Alexander Goldenweiser and Emil Gilels. During his youth, he was taught by Markus Stange, a pupil of Jürgen Uhde, and also received crucial artistic inspiration from masterclasses with Vitaly Margulis and Seymour Bernstein. As a pianist, Christian A. Pohl performs both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. His musical partners have included, amongst others, Felix Gottlieb, Christoph Henkel, Daishin Kashimoto, as well as members of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Following teaching posts at the conservatoires in Freiburg and Stuttgart, he was appointed in 2009, at the age of 34, to the Chair of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. His works on piano pedagogy had already been published by renowned publishers such as Schott, Breitkopf & Härtel and Hudson River Press (New York). He has been an author with Edition Peters since 2017.
In addition to his academic work, Christian A. Pohl is in demand internationally as a concert pianist, lecturer, jury member and speaker. Masterclasses, seminars and lectures have taken him to numerous European and Asian countries, including Spain, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Egypt, China and Japan. He has taught at institutions including the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
He regularly serves as a juror at national and international piano competitions, including the Dvořák Competition, the Schumann Competition and the Bach Competition. Since 2012, he has been Director of the International Mendelssohn Academy in Leipzig, and since 2021, President of the International Piano Academy in Murrhardt.
His students regularly achieve top placings at national and international piano competitions, including gold and silver medals at major international competitions. Within the university, Christian A. Pohl took on numerous leadership roles. He headed the Piano/Conducting department for six years, was a member of the Senate and the Admissions Committee, and served as the representative for instrumental resources. In 2014, he was nominated for the Saxon Teaching Prize. For more than two decades, his academic and artistic work has focused on research into efficient practice and teaching methods. The result of this research is the Pohl Method – a systematic approach to developing pianistic skills that combines insights from instrumental pedagogy, learning psychology, kinesiology and decades of teaching practice.
This development reached its first published milestone with the release of his 400-page standard work *Piano Methodology* in 2022 by Edition Peters. Since 2023, the Pohl Method has been continuously expanded and refined. Today, it is a globally unique professional development programme for pianists and piano teachers, combining a scientific foundation, artistic excellence and practice-oriented teaching into a holistic training concept.
