Born 1959 in the provincial town of Westerstede, Northwest Germany, Plagge received his first piano lessons at home. By 1969 he was studying at the Bremen and Hamburg Conservatories with Prof. Peter-Jürgen Hofer. Plagge won the 1st prize of Hamburg’s Steinway Competition five times consecutively from 1973 to 1977 as well as several prizes at the Germany national Music Competition “Jugend musiziert”. After finishing school in 1987 he continued his studies with various famous teachers: Vitaly Margulis, Paul Badura-Skoda, Gyorgy Sandor and Karlheinz Kämmerling.
As prizewinner of many national and international competitions, Plagge is regularly performing on concert tours all over the world, as soloist and with national and international orchestras. Since 1991 Plagge is teaching as professor at the University of Music Mozarteum in Salzburg.
Several CD recordings are available with standard repertoire of Beethoven, Scriabine, Ravel, Schubert, Schumann, H. W. Henze and the integrale piano oeuvre of K. Szymanowsky.