Aleksandar Madzar

Born in Belgrade in 1968, Aleksandar Madžar began his piano studies with Gordana Matinovic, later becoming a student of Arbo Valdma at the Belgrade Academy of Music. From 1987 to 1989 he studied with Eliso Virsaladze in Moscow, subsequently with Edouard Mirzoian at the Strasbourg Conservatory and in Brussels with Daniel Blumenthal. Today, he holds professorships at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire, Brussels and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Bern.

In 2007/08 Madžar maintains his schedule of diverse performance activities: celebrating the 250th anniversary of Scarlatti, he focuses on this composer in a recital programme in Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. He also returns to the Wigmore Hall in recital, and the BBC Philharmonic under the baton of Andris Nelsons, with whom he additionally performs with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. Following a remarkable recital in Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville last season he is immediately invited back, in a two piano recital with Alexandar Melnikov. He will be guest soloist with the Belcea Quartet in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

Other select partnerships are key to Aleksandar Madžar’s current performance schedule. In summer 2007, he appeared as guest artist at the East Neuk Festival and at the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s summer festival, run by close chamber music colleague Anthony Marwood. He collaborates with Ilya Gringolts and their delivery of a Beethoven cycle in St Petersburg in 2006 met with extraordinary praise. This ongoing partnership meets again at the 2008 Verbier Festival. Duo recitals with Juliana Banse are now culminating in an ECM recording for spring 2008.

Of his prize in the 1996 Leeds Piano Competition Gerald Larner of The Times described Madžar as 'the most imaginative musician among the 1996 finalists'. The Leeds competition propelled Madžar onto the UK scene where he also became a sought after soloist with the Royal and BBC Philharmonics, BBC Scottish Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, as well as throughout Europe and Asia working with Paavo Berglund, Ivan Fischer, Paavo Järvi, Carlos Kalmar, John Nelson, Libor Pesek, André Previn and the late Marcello Viotti.

Aleksandar Madžar has given solo recitals in Berlin (Philharmonie), London, Rome, Florence, Milan, Hamburg, Duisburg and on tour in Japan and in Columbia. He is a regular guest artist at the festivals of Bad Kissingen, Schleswig Holstein, the Ivo Pogorelich Festival at Bad Wörishofen, Klavier Festival Ruhr, Davos, Roque d'Antheron, Salzburg, Sintra and Aldeburgh.

His discography includes the two Chopin piano concertos, with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Dmitri Kitaenko for BMG/Classic FM (1997), for the French label Arion (1999) a disc of Chabrier's music for two pianos and, working regularly with cellist Louise Hopkins, a disc of Elliot Carter, Rachmaninov and Schnittke for the Swedish label Intim Musik.

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