Herbert Henck

Born in Treysa, today Schwalmstadt, in 1948 and died in Zeven in 2025; Herbert Henck was a pianist, interpreter of new music and author. He studied piano in Mannheim, Stuttgart and Cologne, with Aloys Kontarsky among others, and worked freelance from 1975; in 2005 an illness ended his concert activity. His focus lay on the music of the 20th century, on composers standing apart and on improvisation. With ECM he brought out eight albums, among them piano music by John Cage, George Antheil and Conlon Nancarrow, Johann Ludwig Trepulka and Alexandr Mosolov, Hans Otte’s “Das Buch der Klänge”, Jean Barraqué’s “Sonata”, Federico Mompou’s “Musica Callada” and the double album “Locations” (2003). In the 1980s he edited five yearbooks “Neuland”; he published studies on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s piano music, on experimental pianism and on Norbert von Hannenheim. On the Cybele albums Portrait Günther Becker (1998) and Günther Becker: Collected Works – Electroacoustic Music (2004) he can be heard as a pianist.