Turkish – American pianist Özgür Aydin made his major concerto debut in 1997 in a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.1 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In the same year, he won the renowned ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the Nippon Music Award in Tokyo – recognition that has since served as the basis for an active and diverse international performing career. He is also a laureate of the Cleveland International Piano Competition.
Mr. Aydin has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras in Germany and Turkey, as well as with the BBC Concert Orchestra London, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Slovak State Philharmonic and Canada’s Calgary Philharmonic. Frequently invited to summer music festivals, he has appeared at Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Ravinia and Edinburgh. He is a guest at many prestigious venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Munich’s Herkulessaal and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.
Mr. Aydin has made recordings of solo piano works by Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninov for the European labels Videal and Yapi Kredi. His performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas and 5 concertos as well as Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier have been highly praised by the critics.
He is also a dedicated chamber musician, he enjoys recurrent collaborations with violinists Midori and Kolja Blacher, cellist Clemens Hagen, violist Naoko Shimizu and members of the Berlin Philharmonic. A new recording with Midori consisting of works by Bloch, Janacek and Shostakovic was released in fall 2013 on Onyx Classiscs.
Born in Colorado, USA to Turkish parents, Mr. Aydin began his music studies with Prof. Kartal at the Ankara Conservatory in Turkey. He subsequently studied with Peter Katin at the Royal College of Music in London and with Prof. Kammerling at the Hanover Music Academy. He has also received valuable instruction from artists such as Tatiana Nikolaeva, Andras Schiff.