Gustav Piekut with friends
The classical music scene's young rising stars occupy the Queen's Hall with pianist Gustav Piekut at the helm.
Programme
- Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Duo for violin and cello (excerpt), M.73
- Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Morpheus for viola and piano
- Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Sonata for cello and piano in D minor, L.135
- Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, opus 8
- Intermission
- Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, opus 81
Denmark is experiencing a boom of talent on the classical music scene. This afternoon, five of them will be gathered in the Queen's Hall when pianist Gustav Piekut visits the hall with four of his friends and musician colleagues, including violist Nicholas Algot Swensen.
An award-winning talent
28-year-old Gustav Piekut has played the piano since he was six years old, and made his debut as a 12-year-old with the Sønderjylland Symphony Orchestra. As an adult, he has impressed with his interpretation of one of the most notoriously difficult works in music history: Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. In 2020, he received the P2 Talent Prize.
Impressionist inspirations
On this afternoon, Piekut acts as the anchor for a concert which features duos and trios by, among others, Shostakovich, Ravel and Debussy, as well as the work Morpheus for piano and viola by late Romantic Rebecca Clarke. The latter work is named after the god Morpheus – the god of dreams in Greek mythology. The dreamy atmosphere rubs off on the work's expression, whose dynamics move in a wide spectrum from almost silently light and floating sounds to intense and dynamic sequences and highlights, which focus on the interplay between viola and piano.
After the intermission, all five musicians gather in Antonin Dvořák's great quintet.
Participants
Gustav Piekut
Gustav Piekut played his first solo concerts in Denmark as a 14-year-old, and has since swept the country's youth competitions for awards, including DR P2's Talent Prize in 2020, where he won for the performance of his great musical idol Ludwig van Beethoven's Bagatel, op. 126, no. 2. He also won Léonie Sonning's Talent Award in 2018.
Anna Egholm
Anna Egholm, after winning all Danish music competitions during her studies with Alexandre Zapolski in Copenhagen, took a trip abroad in 2016 to continue her studies, and simultaneously the first steps towards an international soloist career with several major international awards and competition wins, for instance the 2019 Tibor Varga competition. Her first recording under her own name was released in March 2023 with e.g. Carl Nielsen's violin concerto.
Michael Germer
In 2019, Michael Germer was the youngest semi-finalist in the Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, which was broadcast live all over the world. As a soloist, Michael has played with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Webern Symphony Orchestra, Orchester de l'Université de Genève, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Buchmann-Mehta Symphony Orchestra and collaborated with conductors such as Lahav Shani and Vladimir Kiradjiev. In August 2019, he was awarded the large Jakob Gade grant in Tivoli's Concert Hall.
Nicholas Algot Swensen
Nicholas Algot Swensen is a passionate violist, chamber musician, soloist and conductor. As a violist, he has won several prizes, such as Oskar Nedbal competition in 2020 (Prague). In April 2021, he was a soloist with the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and he is currently in the process of taking his master's at the Juilliard School of Music with Heidi Castleman and Misha Amory.
Jonathan Algot Swensen
Jonathan Algot Swensen is a cellist and brother of Nicholas and received the Avery Fischer career grant in 2022. Like the concert's other performers, he too has won a string of awards, including second Windsor International String Competition (2019). In 2022, he was also noted as Musical America's "New Artist of the Month" and in Gramophone Magazine as "one to watch"
