Jonathan Aasgaard
Key details:
- Department:
- Strings, Harp & Guitar
- Role:
- Cello Tutor
Biography & Pure profile
One of Europe’s most versatile cellists, the Norwegian Jonathan Aasgaard is active as soloist, chamber musician, studio musician, orchestral principal, teacher, and explorer of new music.
He is Principal Cello of the Sinfonia of London, a regular guest principal of leading British and continental European orchestras, and, as a dedicated teacher, Professor of Cello at Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Chamber music performances have taken him across Europe, the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, and the USA: he has collaborated with artists such as the violinists Nigel Kennedy, Henning Kraggerud, and Julian Rachlin, violist Lawrence Power, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Giovanni Sollima, pianists Simon Trpčeski, Boris Giltburg, and Joanna MacGregor, and clarinettist Martin Fröst in a range of prominent festivals and concert halls.
He has performed more than fifty works for cello and orchestra, his discography including recordings of the William Walton Cello Concerto with the Sinfonia of London, Richard Rodney-Bennett Cello concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Bloch’s Schelomo with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, works for cello and orchestra by Carl Davis with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and, among a number of recital discs, Brahms’s cello sonatas with Martin Roscoe, an ‘Editors Choice’ for chamber music in the magazine Gramophone.
A champion of new music, he has given the world première of Carl Davis’s Ballade for cello and orchestra, the European première of Giovanni Sollima’s Double Cello Concerto, the UK première of Weinberg’s Cello Concerto, the US première of concertos by Franz Neruda and Emil Hartmann, and world premières of dozens of solo pieces, many written specially for him.
Jonathan Aasgaard plays a cello made by Celeste Farotti, in Milan, in 1926.