Margit Haider-Dechant

The reconstructed 1-movement Piano Concerto No. 6 in D major by Nicholas Cook from sketches by Ludwig van Beethoven in the arrangement by Hermann Dechant was published by the later in 2015 and premiered in Bonn.

Haider-Dechant is President of the International Joseph Woelfl Society (IJWG), which she co-founded in 2011, and Chairman of the Joseph-Woelfl-Gesellschaft Bonn.

Haider-Dechant studied education and piano at the Bruckner-Konservatorium in Linz, supported by a Bösendorfer scholarship. She also studied piano at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and graduated with a diploma. She then studied with Leonard Hokanson in Frankfurt and Vitaly Margulis in Freiburg im Breisgau. In 2005, she became professor for piano at the Anton Bruckner Private University and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 2009 following her dissertation entitled Joseph Woelfl-Werkverzeichnis.

In addition to her work in Linz, a visiting professorship took her to the Mahidol University in Bangkok from 2001 to 2002. Until her retirement in 2014, she directed a concert class for piano at the Anton Bruckner Private University. Among her students are prize winners of national and international competitions.

Her concert repertoire ranges from Baroque music to modern music. Of particular importance to her, are the works of the 19th century, including Charles-Valentin Alkan, Erik Satie, Groupe des Six, Olivier Messiaen as well as works of Austrian modernism. In 1990, she gave the first public performance of Alkan's Concert sans orchestre op. 39, which had been considered unplayable until then, at the Festival Alkan 1990 in Paris.

Margit Haider-Dechant (born 5 May 1952) is an Austrian concert pianist, musicologist and music educator.