Born in the 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 solo debut with the Munich Symphony Orchestra in a German TV broadcast. Since then a great 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.
Bjarke Mogensen received several international awards and recognitions such as the The P2 Radio Chamber Music Competition, The Almere International Chamber Music Competition and The Arts Desk ‘Album of the Year’ (2013). He took 1st prize in the European Broadcast Unions “New Talent” competition in Bratislava and a few years later the Danish Music Critics Artist Prize. Already during his student years, Mogensen had his solo debut-recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York.
He has performed chamber music in duo with among others violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Tatjana Masurenko and cellist Andreas Brantelid. As a soloist he has worked with very important 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 Mogensen’s 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.
He is constantly exploring new ways of using his instrument in new combinations of genres. Therefore his concert programs mostly include brand new works often dedicated to him by some of Scandinavia’s most prolific composers.
His repertoire spans transcriptions of the classical music of composers such as Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov to a huge program of original literature with compositions by Sofia Gubaidulina, Poul Ruders, Per Nørgård and many others.
Bjarke Mogensen plays the Mythos Accordion No.5 often described as the Stradivarius of the accordion. He graduated from the soloist class at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he now is an associate professor of accordion and chamber music.
