Founded in autumn 2008 by internationally renowned soloists who for many years have championed the interpretation and promotion of contemporary music, Berlin PianoPercussion is an ensemble characterized by the individual and complementary personalities of its members. During the Festival of „Centre Acanthes“ 2008 in Metz, pianists Prodromos Symeonidis and Ya-ou Xie gave a series of concerts with works for two pianists and two percussionists under the direction of Sylvio Gualda, the reception of which led them to launch a new piano-percussion ensemble. Back in Berlin, having been convinced by the enormous possibilities of such a formation and fulfilled by the wish to promote and broaden the existing repertoire, they proceeded with the creation of Berlin PianoPercussion.
Since its founding, the ensemble has commissioned over thirty new works by renowned composers, like Hugues Dufourt, Tristan Murail and Georg Katzer, and premiered over thirty as well. It has received funds from the Senate of Berlin, the Deutscher Musikrat, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the German-French Fund for Contemporary Music, the Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and the Pearl River Piano Group. Since 2010, it has a cooperation with the Konzerthaus Berlin, where it gives concerts regularly. Further performances took place in numerous concert halls and music festivals, like the Radialsystem V, the Sendesaal Bremen, Berliner Festspiele / MaerzMusik, Philharmonie Essen, Intersonanzen Potsdam and november music Essen. Besides concert activity, there have been two CD-productions in cooperation with the german label Telos Music.