Bjarke Mogensen

Exceptionel musician and long time friend of Martin Lohse, who has dedicated a long line of accordion works to Bjarke Mogensen.

Officiel website
Website text (Aug. 2018)

“Bjarke Mogensen is an astonishment on record. Once heard, never forgotten.”

Norman Lebrecht / The Arts Journal.

Born in 1985 on the Danish Island of Bornholm, Bjarke Mogensen quickly made a name for himself as an internationally acclaimed accordion virtuoso and as a versatile musician with a keen ear for different styles. At the age of 13 he made his debut as a soloist in a German TV broadcast with the Munich Symphony Orchestra with millions of viewers. Since then an unusual curiosity and search for new sounds and expressions has taken him on musical paths where few other musicians have ventured before as a highly sought-after soloist in the classical music world.

Already during his studies, Bjarke Mogensen had his solo debut-recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York and the same year he won the P2 Radio Chamber Music Competition with his duo MYTHOS as well as the Almere International Chamber Music Competition in 2013. He took 1st prize in the European Broadcast Unions “New Talent” competition in Bratislava and a few years later Bjarke received the Danish Music Critics Artist Prize – all firsts for the accordion.

Bjarke Mogensen has given solo concerts all over the world from New York to Moscow, from Iceland to Turkey. He has performed chamber music with violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Andreas Brantelid. As a soloist he has worked with orchestras such as the Moscow Virtuosi, Kremerata Baltica, Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, The Tiroler Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Orchestra and the Copenhagen Philharmonic.

Bjarke Mogensens repertoire is almost unlimited, with a span ranging from folk music and accordion classics over his own arrangements and transcriptions to brand new works for accordion as well as improvisation.

A series of his award-winning recordings and arrangements can be found on the British label Orchid Classics as well as the national Danish cd-label Dacapo-Records.

Bjarke plays the Mythos Accordion No.5 often described as the Stradivarius of the accordion. He is also among the very few accordionists in the world who plays the quarter tonal accordion, an instrument which was custom made in Italy. Bjarke Mogensen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and today he teaches accordion and chamber music at the same place.

Future engagements include the world premiere of new accordion concertos by Faroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen and Poul Ruders performed a.o. with the National Danish Symphony Orchestra and the Canada-based Victoria Symphony.