Niklas Liepe, Violin
© COPYRIGHT_OLIVER_VONBERG_LIEPE
The Opus Klassik award winner Niklas Liepe is one of those highly talented young soloists who goes his own way, regardless. One of those artists constantly coming up with new ideas, launching projects that take real courage, because both the concept and the artistic standards boarder on the brazen.
The exceptional violinist Niklas Liepe is arguably one of the most impressive artistic personalities of his generation. He plays with a spectacular range of tonal and technical finesse and seems to become one with his violin, mesmerizing his audiences with performances that are at once breathtaking and passionate, dreamy and romantic. With innovative projects like the Sony Classical #New PaganiniProject Niklas Liepe has expanded the frontiers of classical music. Niklas Liepe has won the NDR Culture Award and is a laureate of the 2017 German Music Competition.
With his Paganini Project, the Hamburg-based violinist Niklas Liepe attracted international attention and sparkling reviews during the past year. He commissioned some 20 composers and arrangers to rearrange Niccolò Paganini’s mind-bogglingly difficult caprices for solo violin to be played with orchestral accompaniment – each of the pieces in its own unique style. Foxtrot and tango, jazz and reverberant romanticism go hand in hand in these amusing, irreverent new versions, all of which leave the original violin solo part unaltered. In 2017 Niklas Liepe and his brother founded the „Liepe & Co. Festival” at asteel warehouse near Hannover’s South Train Station. Here, too, he tests the limits of classical music anew.
In the 2023/2024 season, Niklas Liepe can be heard in Europe and Asia with the NDR Hannover, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the WDR Funkhausorchester, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra or the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, among others. He will make his debut at the Rheingau Music Festival, the Beethovenfest Bonn and the Ocean Sun Festival.
In autumn 2023 his third CD project #Elements together with the Oscar-award winning composer Rachel Portman will be released on SONY Classical together with the conductor Erina Yashima and the WDR Funkhaus Orchestra.
Niklas Liepe has performed with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Fazil Say, Christoph Eschenbach and Andras Schiff.
As a soloist Niklas Liepe performs with various orchestras such as the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Bratislava, the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover or the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken/ Kaiserslautern under conductors such as Jamie Phillips, Garry Walker, Hartmut Haenchen, Christoph Koncz, Christoph Eschenbach and others.
Niklas Liepe has received awards from the Northern German Broadcasting Corporation, the Braunschweig Classix Festival, the Danzig Festival in Poland, the Kocian Violin Competition in the Czech Republic, as well as double awards from the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland and the 2017 German Music Competition. He studied at the Hannover Music University with Prof. Krzysztof Wegrzyn, at the Cologne Music University with Prof. Zakhar Bron and with Prof. Ana Chumachenco and Prof. Mihaela Martin at the Kronsberg Academy.
Since 2022 Niklas Liepe is working at the Musikhochschule Hamburg in the subject "Art Participation & Strings Diversity".