Christoph Schnackertz was born in 1984 and took his first piano lessons with Clovis Alessandri. He went on to study piano with Pierre Laurent Aimard, and vocal accompanying with Jürgen Glauss. He also served as the regular accompanist in the vocal class of Christoph Prégarien. From 2007 to 2010 Schnackertz received scholarships from the Yehudi Menuhin LiveMusicNow in Cologne.
From 2007 to 2013 he was part of a regular duo with soprano Anna Lucia Richter. Since 2012 Schnackertz has been working with Julian Prégardien. Their concert activities have taken them to Zurich, Vienna, Copenhagen, Munich, Berlin, London, and Hamburg. In 2014, they released a CD on the label Myrios Classics in cooperation with German Radio.
During the 2014/2015 season, Schnackertz worked as a piano accompanist and musical director at the Theater am Engelsgarten in Wuppertal, where they performed a staged version of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. With Christoph Prégardien, he has performed in Wigmore Hall in London, at the Schwetzingen Festival, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Tonhalle in Zurich. He has also performed in Schwarzenberg, Oxford, Berlin, Brussels, and Warsaw. He has worked with Juliane Banse, Julia Kleiter, Hanna Elisabeth Müller, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Christiane Karg, Thomas Bonni, Michael Dahmen, and Oskar Hillebrandt. Schnackertz has performed with the WDR Radio Choir, Chorwerk Ruhr, and the Collegium Vocale in Gent. In 2018, he released a CD with Chorwerk Ruhr under the direction of Florian Helgath devoted to works by Johannes Brahms. Schnackertz has also worked with conductors such as Marcus Creed, Christoph Eschenbach, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and has accompanied masterclasses with Christoph Prégardien, Edda Moser, Renato Bruson, Thomas Heyer, Martin Kränzle, and Christiane Karg.
As an art song accompanist, Schnackertz is a prize winner of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin (2010 and 2011) and the International Robert Schumann Competition (2012). He won first prize at the 2012 GenRE competition in Cologne.
His repertoire takes in all the great song cycles from the Romantic period as well as lieder by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Wolfgang Rihm. His performances in numerous broadcasts have been amply documented.
