Isabel Gabbe

Univ.-Prof. of Piano and Piano Pedagogy⋅Department Music Education Innsbruck⋅School of Music & Arts Education (SOMA)

‘Communicating with music means communicating across all language barriers,’ says Isabel Gabbe. It is therefore not surprising that the pianist and music teacher of Franco-German origin appears as a chamber musician and accompanist as well as a soloist. In 2016, she was appointed professor of piano and piano didactics at the Mozarteum University, where she has been head of the department in Innsbruck since 2018. She is also a certified music physiologist in the field of musicians' health.

In the past, she has gained many years of experience as a piano teacher and music educator at music academies, music schools, general education schools and day-care centres. From 2009 to 2014, she was coordinator and member of the pedagogical management for the education programme of the Ruhr Piano Festival Foundation. In numerous workshops in North Rhine-Westphalia, she trains nursery and primary school teachers in creative music-making with groups of children.

Regular collaboration with the Ruhr Piano Festival is very important to her in order to establish music as a natural part of children's education. At the ‘Moments Musicaux’ chamber music festival in France, which she founded, directed from 2005 to 2017 and of which she has been Honorary President since 2023, she facilitated encounters between well-known and established musicians with young, up-and-coming talents and created concert programmes with worthwhile, unknown works.

Isabel Gabbe performs and gives masterclasses and training courses throughout Europe, Brazil and the USA. She has thrilled audiences in major concert halls such as the Philharmonie Berlin, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Glocke Bremen, the Herkuslessaal in Munich, the Teatro Guaira (the largest concert hall in South America) and the Kölner Philharmonie.

As a soloist and chamber musician, she has won prizes in numerous national and international competitions, including the Bremen Piano Competition, the duo competitions in Barcelona (Spain) and Caltanissetta (Italy) and the German Music Council competition.

She has made numerous radio and television recordings for Deutschland Radio Berlin, Sender Freies Berlin, WDR, France 2 and Radio Bremen. Her debut CD was released in 2006 with suites by Debussy, Ravel, Bach and Albéniz. In 2013, she released a CD with songs by contemporary composer John Patrick Thomas together with soprano Julia Henning. In 2014, she produced a CD with the Kettwiger Bach Ensemble featuring Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle on a historic Klems grand piano by Robert Schumann. In 2015, the CD ‘Weihnachtsmann, mach Du das mal!’ was released on the Kaleidos Musikeditionen label. Publications on piano didactics can be found in Üben&Musizieren (Schott-Verlag) and Innsbrucker Perspektiven zur Musikpädagogik (Waxman-Verlag).

Isabel Gabbe received her training with Prof Hans Leygraf in Salzburg and Berlin. She received artistic inspiration from John Perry, Georgy Sebok, Klaus Schilde, Peter Frankle, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Paul Badura-Skoda and Rainer Becker. She has worked in chamber music courses with Gerhard Schulz (Alban Berg Quartet), David Finckel (Emerson String Quartet), Zara Nelsova (N.Y.), Eberhardt Feltz, Wolfram Rieger and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.