Dejan Lazić

Dejan Lazić, born on February 7, 1977, in Zagreb, comes from a family of musicians. Raised in Salzburg, he also studied at the Mozarteum University there. As a pianist, he now performs all over the world, from New York's Lincoln Center and Tokyo's Suntory Hall to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He has toured North and South America, Australia, and Asia, and made his BBC Proms debut in 2011. The pianist and composer has released numerous CDs and is also a passionate advocate of chamber music. Today, Lazić lives in Amsterdam.

In addition to his piano, chamber, and orchestral music, Dejan Lazić has also written cadenzas for selected piano concertos by the Viennese Classical composers. His Piano Concerto in the Istrian Style, Op. 18, which premiered in the summer of 2014 and is frequently performed by Lazić himself, has achieved great popularity. In addition, Lazić adapted the famous Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms for himself, in order to release it as a kind of Piano Concerto No. 3 by Johannes Brahms.
Dejan Lazić's compositions have garnered considerable acclaim. Since 2015, he has been under contract as a composer with Sikorski Music Publishers. His arrangement of Brahms's Violin Concerto for piano premiered and was recorded in 2009 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, and continues to enjoy success: at the BBC Proms, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Hamburg Easter Festival, the Chopin Festival Warsaw, and in America and Japan. Lazic has performed his Piano Concerto in the Istrian Style, Op. 18 many times since its premiere at the 2014 Aspen Music Festival. His first major orchestral work, a tone poem entitled Mozart and Salieri (after Alexander Pushkin), Op. 21, was commissioned and premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Krzysztof Urbanski. His cadenzas to six piano concertos by Mozart, Beethoven's piano concertos Nos. 1-4 and Haydn's piano concertos Nos. 4 & 11 were also published by Sikorski.
Dejan Lazić’s Alterations on the Istrian Folk Anthem, Op. 29, recorded in 2023 with the Munich Radio Orchestra under Ivan Repušic for the BR Klassik label under the title "Istrian Rhapsody," was shortlisted in two categories for the 2024 Opus Klassik awards: Composer of the Year and Concert Recording of the Year. Two other recent compositions are: Chinese Fantasy for violin and orchestra, Op. 22, and Variations on a Love Song by Kanding for solo violin.
Dejan Lazić’s refreshing interpretations of the repertoire have made him one of the most unique and unusual soloists of his generation. Spiegel magazine wrote of his Liszt recording for Onyx Classics: "Magnificent technique, engaging and witty, yet full-bodied and thoughtful: This overview of Liszt's work is a gift for both newcomers and connoisseurs." Chamber concerts and recitals regularly take him to venues such as the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Lincoln Center (New York), the Melbourne Recital Centre, the Forbidden City Recital Hall (Beijing), and to festivals such as the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg and the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, with chamber music partners including Joshua Bell, Sol Gabetta, Andreas Ottensamer, and Benjamin Schmid. He is the designated artistic director of the 2026 Toujours Mozart Festival in Munich.

Lazić regularly performs with orchestras such as the Atlanta Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra Hamburg, Netherlands Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He enjoys a significant following in the Far East, tours China with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer, and appears with the NHK Symphony and Yomiuri Nippon Orchestras, as well as the Seoul and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestras. He has established close working relationships with conductors such as Giovanni Antonini, Iván Fischer, Michael Francis, Andris Nelsons, Ivan Repušic, Thomas Søndergård, Robert Spano, John Storgårds, Krzysztof Urbanski, Jan Willem de Vriend, and Kazuki Yamada. Furthermore, he increasingly conducts and leads these orchestras himself.

Biographies may be reprinted free of charge in programme booklets with the following credit: Reprinted with kind permission of the music publisher
Boosey & Hawkes/Sikorski