Lukas Geniusas [NEW ENTRY]

Biography:

Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas has firmly established himself as one of the most exciting and distinctive artists of his generation.
Praised for his ‘brilliance and maturity’ (The Guardian) he is invited to give recitals in the most prestigious
venues all over the world such as the Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Salle Gaveau, Louvre Auditorium, Frick Collection New York, Phillips Collection, Teatro Carlo Felice, Sala Verdi in Milan and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. He is also regularly invited to festivals including the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, Piano aux Jacobins, Rheingau, the Ruhr Piano Festival, Schloss-Elmau and the Lockenhaus Music Festivals.

Lukas Geniušas performs with numerous orchestras including Radio France Philharmonic
Orchestra, National de Lyon Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Kremerata Baltica, Russian National Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and St Gallen Symphony Orchestra under the batons of conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Leonard Slatkin, Charles Dutoit, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Saulius Sondeckis, Antoni Wit and Rafael Payare to name but a few.

Lukas began the 2020/21 season performing at the Philharmonie de Paris with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Orchestre de Paris, though subsequent invitations to join the orchestra on tour to Macau and Japan, as well as engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Andris Poga, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and John Nelsons and Orchestre national des pays de la Loire and Jonathan Heyward fell victim to the pandemic. However, during this time Lukas was able to give many performances notably at the Moscow, St Petersburg and Novosibirsk Philharmonies, the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw and at the Nohant Chopin Festival.
He has since given concerts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Maxim Emelyanchev, the Aolberg Symphony Orchestra and Andris Poga, a tour with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra and Kristiina Poska, recitals at the Piano à Lyon series and given concerts with the soprano Asmik Grigorian in some of Europe’s most prestigious halls including the Geneva and Frankfurt Opera houses, the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg and La Scala in Milan.

In 2023 will perform at the Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence Festivals, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Zurich Opera House.
Further highlights of the 2022/2023 season include Lukas’s concerto debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Tugan Sokhiev, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse with Dima Slobodeniouk and a return to the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra with Andris Poga. In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rachmaninov, Lukas is dedicating a series of concerts in which he will give the first public performances of the original, unabridged version of Rachmaninov’s First Piano sonata, which he will perform in a special concert at the Villa Senar, the composer’s Swiss residence, as well as in Montreal, Bordeaux, Gran Canaria and Paris. In another major project, he performs two pieces for speaking pianist by Frederic Rzewski: Rubenstein in Berlin with text from the diaries of Rubenstein and De Profundis after Oscar Wilde.

Known for his innate curiosity and extensive musical interests, Lukas Geniušas explores a wide range of repertoire, from the baroque to works by contemporary composers. His repertoire spans from Beethoven Piano Concerti through to Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis and John Adams, as well as a strong interest in Russian repertoire such as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and, of course, Prokofiev. He is an avid chamber musician and an extremely inquisitive performer and enjoys working on new works by modern composers, as well as resurrecting rarely performed repertoire.
These aspects of his career are reflected in Lukas Geniušas’ critically acclaimed discography, which includes works by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov (the complete Preludes); Chopin (Etudes opus 10 and 25), and recordings of chamber music (Ravel, Stravinsky, Desyatnikov, Shostakovich and Tchaïkovsky with Aylen Pritchin and Alexander Buzlov for Melodiya. His first recording on MIRARE Prokofiev Sonatas was awarded the ‘Choc’ de Classica and the Diapason ‘Recital CD of the Year’ in 2019, his second was
dedicated to Chopin (Sonata no. 3 and a selection of Mazurkas) and his most recent – Chants populaires - to Desyatnikov, Bartok and Tchaikovsky.

Born in Moscow in 1990, Lukas Geniušas graduated from the Chopin Music College Moscow, in 2008. He is the laureate of several prestigious international competitions, notably Silver Medalist at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and at the 2010 International Chopin competition. Since 2015, Lukas Geniušas has been a featured artist of "Looking at the stars" a philanthropy project based in Toronto, whose purpose is to bring classical music to institutions and organizations (prisons, hospitals and shelters) where people may not have an opportunity to experience it live in a traditional setting.

DIAPASON CD OF THE YEAR – RECITAL CATEGORY
LUKAS GENIUSAS : PROKOFIEV SONATAS No. 2 and 5, 10 Pieces for Piano op. 12
‘Geniušas seems to know how to do everything better than anyone...’
Geniušas, who takes risk after risk, draws from his keyboard a palette of which the variety, the truth and the beauty are
bewitching.... And what creative power in the final Vivace! The intensity of the lines, the jumps to the high register, the cascades
of arpeggios in both hands give a Lisztienne dimension. Geniušas seems to know how to do everything better than anyone…
DIAPASON NO 675 January 2019 / Patrick Szernovicz

GRAMOPHONE AWARD 2022 – SONG CATEGORY
LUKAS GENIUSAS / ASMIK GRIGORIAN: DISSONANCE
…Never has this Steinway been played with such modesty, delicacy, suavity, attention to sound and intelligent phrasing… nothing was lost of his finesse of touch, nor of his art as a colourist.
Three short piano pieces by Tchaikovsky were to show Lukas Geniušas in all the aspects of his versatile talent: whimsical imagination both virtuoso and airy, a liquid touch on the arabesques of the left hand in the capricious "Humorous Scherzo", posing as a storyteller with golden tones in an introverted nocturne, finally capricious and faunistic, playing with the difficulties to highlight only the spirit of the music in the Dumka.
Recital at the Grand Grand Théâtre de Genève / Forumopera.com review Charles Sigel, June 2022

course description: 

Participation fee € 350