Lars Vogt was born in 1970 in Düren, Germany. He studied with Ruth Weiss in Aachen and with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling in Hannover. In 1990 he came to widespread attention when he won Second Prize at the International Leeds Piano Competition. Lars Vogt has gone on to enjoy a high-profile career Europe as well as in the United States USA and Asia. In the 2003-04 season, for example, he had the honor of being named pianist-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic. In the past three years he has concertized under the baton of Christian Thielemann with the Vienna Philharmonic, embarked on an extensive tour with the Dresden Staatskapelle Dresden under Myung-Whun Chung, and made appearances with the London Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. In the summer of 2008 he performed at the BBC Proms and the Salzburg Festival; in the current season he has been concertizing again with the Berlin Philharmonic and giving solo recitals in London, Paris, Madrid, and Istanbul. Lars Vogt has also become a familiar name in America, performing with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics. As a chamber musician, he works in close partnership with Christian Tetzlaff, Antje Weithaas, Truls Mørk, and Heinrich Schiff, and he has also collaborated with actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. In 1998 Lars Vogt founded the Spannungen Chamber Music Festival in Heimbach/Eifel, which has won major acclaim within just a few years. Many of its concerts have been released in an ongoing CD series, winning the German Record Critics’ Award in 2007. Along with CDs featuring his work as a soloist, Lars Vogt has recorded the piano concertos of Schumann and Grieg with Simon Rattle and Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 2 under the baton of Claudio Abbado.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut in connection with the Late Night series of concerts on August 28, 1999: Klaus-Maria Brandauer read selections from Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus while Lars Vogt played Beethoven and Brahms. Last appearance was on September 7, 2008 in a chamber music concert with the Ensemble Vienna-Berlin.