The Opus Klassik award winner 2021 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 Paganini Project 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 a steel warehouse near Hannover’s South Train Station. Here, too, he tests the limits of classical music anew.
During the 2021/2022 season, Niklas Liepe will be appearing in Europe and Asia with the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Bangkok Symphonie Orchestra and Rijeka Opera Symphony Orchestra, performing works by J. Sibelius, S. Prokofiev und C. Saint-Seans. Debut performances will take him to the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Thailand Cultural Center and the Lower Saxony Music Festival. In addition, he will be appearing at the Berlin Philharmonic and will be teaching at the Villa Musica in Rheinland-Pfalz and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prag.
In autumn 2020 his second CD project #GoldergReflections was released on SONY Classical together with the conductor Jamie Phillips and the NDR Radiophilharmonie.
Niklas Liepe has performed with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Fazil Say, Christoph Eschenbach and Andras Schiff.
He has appeared as a soloist with the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, the Bratislava Slovakian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Bangkok Symphonie Orchestra the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra, the Rheinland-Pfalz State Orchestra and the German Radio Philharmonic of Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern, among others, with such conductors as Garry Walker, Hartmut Haenchen, Christoph Eschenbach, Jamie Phillips and Gregor Bühl.
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.