Dag Achatz is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

pianist and composer. Born in Stockholm in 1942 of a Swedish mother and a Viennese father, both musicians, he was raised in Switzerland, where he entered the Geneva Conservatory at age of 8. Graduating with honors, he continued his studies with Greta Eriksson in Stockholm, with

Alfred Cortot Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poeti ...

and

Guido Agosti Guido Agosti (11 August 19012 June 1989) was an Italian pianist and piano teacher. Agosti was born in Forlì in 1901. He studied piano with Ferruccio Busoni, Bruno Mugellini and Filippo Ivaldi, earning his diploma at age 13. He studied counterp ...

in Siena, and with Susanne Roche and

Vlado Perlemuter Vladislas "Vlado" Perlemuter (26 May 1904 – 4 September 2002) was a Lithuanian-born French pianist and teacher. Biography Vladislas (Vlado) Perlemuter was born to a Polish Jewish family, the third of four sons, in Kovno, Russia (now Kaunas in Li ...

in Paris. In 1960 he claimed victory in the Rudolf Ganz Competition in Lausanne, and in 1964 took first prize at the coveted

Maria Canals International Music Competition The Maria Canals International Music Competition ( ca, Concurs Internacional de Música Maria Canals Barcelona, ) is a music competition held yearly in the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona. It was founded as a piano competition in 1954, but ...

in Barcelona. He was also a prizewinner at the Bavarian Radio Competition in Munich and the Viotti Competition in Vercelli. He has since performed in more than 25 countries and in most major musical centers, including London, Paris, New York, Boston, Berlin, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Vienna, Tokyo and Beijing. Achatz has played more than 1,000 recitals and has performed more than 240 times with orchestras including the radio orchestras of Stockholm, Munich, Paris, Stuttgart, Torino, Milan, and with the Orchestre de Pasdeloup of Paris, l'Orchestre de l'Opéra de Monte Carlo, the Gewandhaus of Leipzig, the Staatskapelle of Dresden, and with the Philharmonic Orchestras of Stockholm, Oslo, Barcelona and Lisbon. He has participated in the international music festivals of Montreux, Aix-en-Provence and Savonlina in Finland. He has also collaborated with many eminent conductors, including Celibidache, Bernstein, Kertesz, Zinmann, Kamu, Maris Jansons and others. His master classes have taken him to the Academie-Festival des Arcs in France, the Institute of Advanced Musical Studies in Montreux, the Osaka Conservatory in Japan, and the Umea International Academy in Sweden. Dag Achatz serves frequently on the juries of international competitions, including those at Jaen, the

Clara Haskil Clara Haskil (7 January 1895 – 7 December 1960) was a Romanian classical pianist, renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire. She was particularly noted for her performances and recordings of Mozart. She was also ...

, Vercelli, Paris, Oporto, Munich, (Bavarian Radio Orchestra Competition), and many others. In

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

and lieder, he has performed with the Da Ponte Quartet, the Fresk

String Quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...

, with singers

Barbara Hendricks Barbara Hendricks (born November 20, 1948) is an American operatic soprano and concert singer. Hendricks has lived in Europe since 1977, and in Switzerland in Basel since 1985. She is a citizen of Sweden following her marriage to a Swedish citiz ...

Birgit Finnilä Birgit Finnilä (born 20 January 1931) is a Sweden, Swedish contralto and opera singer. Finnilä was born in Falkenberg, Sweden and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She made her operatic debut in Gothenburg in 1967. Though princip ...

, Hugues Cuenod and Joanna Porackova, and in four-hand music with Yukie Nagai. He has made more than two dozen recordings for BIS, CBS, EMI, Melodiya and Americus Records. His best-selling CD of the music of Gershwin, on the BIS label, has been widely praised, as are his recordings of Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, Schumann, Liszt, Stenhammar, Grieg and many others. Outside the established classical music world, he also worked on stage with French singer-songwriter

Léo Ferré Léo Ferré (24 August 1916 – 14 July 1993) was a French-born Monégasque poet and composer, and a dynamic and controversial live performer, whose career in France dominated the years after the Second World War until his death. He released s ...

, during the mid-1970s.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Achatz, Dag Living people 1942 births Swedish classical pianists Male classical pianists Swiss classical pianists Maria Canals International Music Competition prize-winners 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century Swedish male musicians