Lars Vogt, piano
German pianist Lars Vogt launched his 2006-07 season with appearances at two prestigious American music festivals, Tanglewood and Mostly Mozart. Equally renowned as concert soloist and chamber musician, Mr. Vogt has been invited to perform in both roles at both festivals, a common occurrence for this talented Leeds International Piano Competition prize-winner. Other U.S. appearances by Mr. Vogt this year will include performances with the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert, the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yakov Kreizberg, and a seven-concert traversal of the complete piano concerti of Beethoven with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Roberto Abbado. Later in the season Mr. Vogt will again join the SPCO and Maestro Abbado to perform Beethoven on a European tour to include Budapest, Zagreb, Vienna, Maribor, Warsaw, Berlin and Salzburg. In other appearances with orchestra in the 2006-07 season, Mr. Vogt will perform with the Mozarteum Orchestra and Ivor Bolton; the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester under Dmitri Kitajenko; the Vienna Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann; the Philharmonia Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnányi; the LSO and Richard Hickox, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding. Mr. Vogt will then tour Taiwan, Korea and Japan with the MCO and Mr. Harding. Mr. Vogt also will return to Asia at the invitation of the Malaysian Philharmonic, with whom he will perform Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto under Matthias Bamert.

Each concert season features a blend of concerto, chamber music and recital appearances for Mr. Vogt, who will perform solo recitals this season in Essen, Luxembourg City, Rome, Madrid, Chicago and Hamburg. Another important part of each season is the highly regarded Spannungen Chamber Music Festival (www.spannungen.de), of which Lars Vogt is the founder and Artistic Director. Presented in a spectacular Art Deco power station nestled by a crystalline lake in the hills near Cologne, the festival is recognized by aficionados as one of the superlative chamber music experiences available in the world today. Recordings of each year’s Spannungen Festival (to be held in May 2007), available on EMI, have garnered not only critical acclaim but also the Echo Klassik Award (the German Grammy) and the coveted Deutsche Schallplattenpreis. Mr. Vogt also performs with his Spannungen colleagues as often as possible in chamber music concerts throughout the season, this year in Germany, Austria, and England. His award-winning collaboration with violinist (and close friend) Christian Tetzlaff can be heard this season in concerts in Paris and Essen.

In the concluding months of 2006-07, Lars Vogt performs Beethoven concerti with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra under Muhai Tang in Switzerland, with the Flanders Philharmonic and Philippe Herreweghe in Belgium, and with the Danish Radio Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard in Italy. Mr.Vogt records exclusively for EMI.