With a repertoire focused on Early Music, Maurice Steger is a sought-after soloist with the leading Early Music period instrument ensembles: Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, The English Concert, Musica Antiqua Köln, Europa Galante or I Barocchisti. In addition, he also appears regularly with modern orchestras, like the Berliner Barock Solisten, Les Violons du Roy and the State Orchestra of Brandenburg. He continues to perform with the most renowned artists, including Hilary Hahn, Rainer Kussmaul, Igor Oistrakh, Fabio Biondi, Sandrine Piau, Andrew Manze, Diego Fasolis, Sol Gabetta and Thomas Quasthoff.

A major portion of Steger’s artistic activities is devoted to recitals accompanied by just a harpsichord or with small chamber orchestras. Here, his regular contributors are the two harpsichordists Naoki Kitaya and Sergio Ciomei. During the season 2009/10, Maurice Steger visited Japan on a recital tour, repeatedly played with Les Violons du Roy under Bernard Labadie in Canada and toured extensively through India. He is equally successful in reappraising seldom played music from the 17th and 18th centuries with Hille Perl (viola da gamba) and Lee Santana (chitarrone). The trio has already played in places like Strasbourg, Munich’s Herkulessaal, the Tonhalle in Zurich, as well as in Braunschweig and Vienna.

But Maurice Steger is also no stranger to contemporary music: He premiered two solo concerts for recorder and orchestra and has performed Rodolphe Schacher’s musical fairytale «Tino Flautino» over 50 times.

After studying with Marcus Creed in Stuttgart and upon Reinhard Goebel’s encouragement, Maurice Steger has now been working as a conductor for a number of years. He performed with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, NDR Radio Philharmonic, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the English Concert, the State Orchestra of Brandenburg, the Musikkollegium Winterthur as well as several baroque ensembles. He has been invited to conduct in places as far away as Taiwan, where he developed a very successful baroque programme. In his position as the «Baroque Music Director» at the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (Principal Conductor: Sir Roger Norrington), he developed and conducted concerts from the baroque and classical eras. He also keet in touch with other conductors of Early Music and accompanies soloists like Andreas Scholl or Hille Perl.

Among his many CD releases, the Telemann flute quartets (Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv), sonatas by Sammartini and Telemann’s suites and concerto for recorder (harmonia mundi) as well as Vivaldi’s concertos for recorder are particularly notable. Several recordings, among them the album «Venezia 1625» (harmonia mundi) received important international awards. His latest release is devoted to Corelli’s collection opus 5 in English adaptations. Based on handwritten sheet music only recently uncovered by Maurice Steger himself, the project brings back to life a historically authentic, but almost forgotten style of musical performance («Mr. Corelli in London» – Steger & The English Concert – harmonia mundi USA 2010).

May 2011