In January 2014, Lars Vogt stepped on to the stage at Sage Gateshead to make his UK conducting debut with Royal Northern Sinfonia. Lars had an endearing and quiet confidence, even when making an attempt one thing new. I've witnessed him talking a minimum of 9 international languages and presumed he was fluent on the peace of mind of the supply, later discovering he solely knew a couple of phrases. However fluency within the language of music was one thing Lars possessed in charming abundance. And it turned out he may specific this simply as properly with a baton in his hand: just some weeks after the ultimate chords of Beethoven’s 4th Symphony had completed resonating across the corridor, it was introduced Lars was to grow to be our subsequent music director.
Beginning his tenure in September 2015, Lars spoke of the “immediate connection” he felt with the orchestra. This connection shortly and organically grew into one thing I've by no means identified between an orchestra and music director: a collective belief and spirit of generosity between orchestra and maestro, borne not simply of admiration for his skills and the music we had been making, but in addition a love for his unfailing kindness and heat.
To play a Beethoven symphony the way in which Lars Vogt performed a Beethoven sonata was electrifying. Within the early days of his conducting profession, Lars stated it made him really feel as if he had been flying. Our new partnership noticed us flying all over the world collectively, touring internationally and travelling all through the native area. Between our busy live performance schedule, we recorded the entire Brahms and Beethoven concerti, directed and performed by Lars, to essential acclaim. The Sunday Instances stated of our recording of Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, “I can’t recall a finer account”.
Lars’s humanity was tantamount to his expertise, touching lives wherever he went. Whereas I used to be gathering a takeaway curry final month, the proprietor ran over, recognising me from a meal I had as soon as shared there with Lars – who dined there just a little too recurrently if I’m sincere! He poured us each a drink and spoke of his admiration for the person and musician for 20 minutes. Audiences right here adored him like no different artist I've shared a stage with. This morning on BBC Radio 3 the presenter learn a message from a neighborhood viewers member, remembering Lars’s customary wink to concertgoers as he left the stage and the way she genuinely felt this was personally for her.
As Lars leaves all our phases for the final time, I need to specific on behalf of everybody at RNS and Sage Gateshead how a lot we treasure our beneficiant share of his time on this world. We beloved him dearly.
Lars Vogt, principal creative accomplice of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, was the orchestra’s music director from 2015-2020.
‘He lifted music off the web page and into the heavens’
Ian Bostridge writes: Lars Vogt was a grasp of the solo piano repertoire, a Mozartian of the primary rank, a deeply dedicated lover of Brahms. It was fortunate for me that he was additionally drawn to the great world of voice and piano. Rehearsing with him was all the time a revelation, however better of all I keep in mind our very first rehearsal, and our selection of encores. To begin with, Brahms’s Meerfahrt (Boat Trip): a curdled barcarolle of desolation wherein Lars’s piano sang the lengthy melody with extraordinary depth. Then Schumann’s Mondnacht (Moon Night time), which I’d carried out many occasions earlier than, and which I believed I knew so properly. Lars lifted it off the web page into the empyrean, abolishing bar traces and making it a factor of freedom and fantasy in a method I had by no means heard.
Lars was residing in Theydon Bois on the time and it appeared slightly great to take the tube to the very finish of the Central Line deep within the coronary heart of Metroland and discover there one of many kings of German pianism, a combination of on a regular basis London life and the excessive Romantic.
We went on to tour, making a speciality of Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, songs of farewell and absence which appear particularly poignant now that he has died, aged solely 51. On the finish of 2019 we took them to Moscow collectively. He was anxious I would get chilly and gave me his woolly hat. His embrace of Russian tradition and language was apparent; his public stand towards Russian aggression within the wake of the invasion of Ukraine was, equally, a vigorous and eloquent one.
Final yr, with the pandemic nonetheless hanging over us, he managed towards the chances to revive his competition within the far west of Germany, Heimbach. All of us stayed collectively in just a little lodge on this small city close to the place Lars had grown up; we carried out in an early Twentieth-century hydroelectric energy station that Lars had commandeered for the week; we ate collectively and after supper all of us performed a kind of crazed model of desk tennis within the basement. It was a super of what convivial chamber music will be, and Lars (already severely unwell) had gathered round him his dearest buddies from greater than 20 years of intensely familial music making. As he slipped away in hospital a few days in the past two of them, the violinists Christian Tetzlaff and Antje Weithaas, performed to him to ease his method.
I final noticed Lars in January along with his orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. I hadn’t seen him conduct earlier than however, in rehearsal, I used to be struck not solely by his whole dedication to the music (Mahler, Strauss, Fauré and Britten) but in addition by the great ambiance of collaboration and friendship he created with the orchestra. This was chamber music writ massive, simply accurately. On the finish of the live performance we moved to the aspect of the stage of the Theatre des Champs Elysées, Lars sat on the piano and did that factor once more, lifting Schubert’s Nacht und Träume off the web page and into the heavens.
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