Lars Vogt – born in Düren, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany on September 8, 1970 - was a German pianist and conductor who caught the eye of the classical music fraternity when he was runner-up at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990 at the age of 20. He performed with many of the world's top orchestras and collaborated with major artists on a long list of recordings. In 2015, he was named music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead, England. He also conducted the Philharmonie Zuidnederland, Nuremburg Symphony and Bochumer Symphony and his 2016-17 season saw performances with the NHK Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Tonkünstlerorchester, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Santa Cecilia Orchestra at La Scala in Milan, the Philharmonia and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Born in the former West Germany, he studied in Achen and Hannover and, following his acclaim at Leeds, he began a career that saw him perform across Europe, Asia, and America. He founded the Spannungen Festival in Heimbach, near Cologne, Germany in 1998, performed as pianist in residence with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Simon Rattle) in 2003-4, and taught at the Hannover Conservatory of Music. His many recordings released between 1992 and 2022 feature works by Grieg, Schumann, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mozart, Liszt, and Chopin. In 2015, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Or Small Ensemble Performance with violinist Christian Tetzlaff and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff for Brahms: The Piano Trios. Lars Vogt’s 2016 release, Brahms: The Violin Sonatas with Tetzlaff went to Number 14 on Billboard's Classical Albums Chart. Other notable recordings by Lars Vogt include Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2, D. 929 (2006), Smetana, Ravel, and Watkins: Piano Trios (2012), Chopin (2014), Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 5 (2017), Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Piano Concerto 3 (2017), Schumann & Strauss: Melodramas (2022) and Schubert: Schwanengesang (2022). Lars Vogt was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and liver in February 2021 and died on September 5, 2022.
