World Piano Day 2025

March 27th, 2025 in Piano News by nilsjohan

Piano Day is an annual worldwide event that takes place on the 88th day of the year, which in 2025 is March 29. Every year, it provokes special concerts, onstage and online, as well as radio shows, podcasts, and playlists. Established in 2015, it is now well known across the globe and this year we celebrate it’s 10th anniversary!

Piano Day was founded in 2015 by the German pianist, composer and producer Nils Frahm to encourage creative responses to the piano through new music, art, and improvisation, bringing people together through large and small, private and public piano-themed events. Frahm envisioned a worldwide holiday, “more important than Christmas and more stressful than Thanksgiving”, when people would create their own piano events with friends or simply share their piano-inspired videos, poems, or photos.

In the years after its launch, Piano Day quickly expanded and began to enter some of the world’s most prestigious venues, from Sydney Opera House to Funkhaus Berlin and London’s Barbican Centre. Every year has its Piano Day playlist, with specially composed piano pieces by professionals and amateurs of all ages and musical persuasions. Since 2022, these playlists have been released as an official album, Vol. 4 coming out on 29 March this year. For the tenth anniversary, Frahm’s recording label Leiter has produced a Piano Day sheet music book together with Faber Music – Piano Day: The Collection. The book features pieces that have appeared on Piano Day playlists over the years, by artists like Olafur Arnalds, Chilly Gonzales, Joep Beving, and Hania Rani.

“Why does the world need a Piano Day? For many reasons. But mostly, because it doesn’t hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.” – Nils Frahm, pianist and founder of Piano Day

Official website: pianoday.org

Piano Day website presents a vast collection of events taking place all over the world. Many of them favour the so called ”new-classical piano music” genre. Piano Street has put an effort in finding performances which reflect the classical piano repertoire.

Selected online events: (more will be added when available)

London Symphony Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra invites to watch concert excerpts: Alice Sara Ott playing Liszt’s thunderous Totentanz, Seong-Jin Cho playing Rachmaninov’s iconic Piano Concerto No 2 and Maria João Pires playing Schumann’s intimate Piano Concerto.
Interview with Eric Lu: Beethoven Edition. Ahead of his orchestral debut next week, LSO spoke with Eric Lu about his early attraction to the piano and the profound significance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s music in his artistic journey.
Interviews with Pianists: Alice Sara Ott discussing why she loves being a musician, as well as Kirill Gerstein on Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F and Frank Dupree on Kapustin’s Piano Concerto No 4.

www.lso.co.uk/happy-world-piano-day/

Medici.tv

Medici.tv invites to a curated 88-minute piano extravaganza, featuring pieces of great emotion and virtuosity by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, Mozart, Beethoven, and many more – in the hands of piano masters past and present, including Glenn Gould, Martha Argerich, Hélène Grimaud, Arthur Rubinstein, Yuja Wang, Maria João Pires and Daniil Trifonov.
www.medici.tv Piano Day 2025 compilation (subscription required)
medici.tv Piano Day 2024/2025 compliation (same as above but free)

Stage+

In a unique London Lightroom concert, Yuja Wang performs a curated Bach-to-Berio repertoire inspired by David Hockney’s immersive 360-degree projections. Offered by Stage+, this all-encompassing audio-visual experience explores sensory connections between art and music, uniting two significant contemporary cultural voices.

https://www.stage-plus.com Wang & Hockney

Non-classical streams and compilations:

ARTE Concert’s Piano Day

Nils Frahm created Piano Day to bring piano lovers together for a day dedicated entirely to the instrument. To echo this international event, ARTE Concert and Sourdoreille Production team up for an evening of music that is 100% keyboard.