PHOTOGRAPHY: JEAN-BAPTISTE PELLERIN
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
About a week before this issue went to press, there came the news we had been fearing: Lars Vogt had died from cancer at the age of 51.
I had spoken to him in July 2022 while he was in hospital near his home city of Nuremberg, and found him in good spirits. He was undergoing an experimental gene-therapy treatment, part of a new pharmaceutical study. ‘Being told I could participate in it was a little bit like winning the lottery,’ he remarked. Well aware that it might not be a cure, he hoped it could ‘at least win some time’. I asked whether he was feeling up to being interviewed. ‘Sure,’ he joked. ‘I’m not doing anything else…’
The illness was diagnosed following tests in February 2021: the doctors found secondaries in Vogt’s liver, then traced the origins of the metastasised cancer to a small tumour at the base of his throat. It was an aggressive form of the illness and the liver tumours were inoperable. Vogt decided to be open and upfront about the disease and its impact upon him, speaking out on Twitter, Radio 3’s Music Matters, in Van Magazine and, about a month before his death, a heart-rending film in Zsolt Bognár’s series Living the Classical Life.
Vogt was aware his choice to go public might not suit everyone facing a life-threatening illness. ‘Some would maybe feel they need to keep it private,’ he reflected. ‘But for me it was clear from the beginning that it’s part of my life now and I wanted people to be able to talk openly about it.’ It also made handling the situation easier for his family – his violinist wife, Anna Reszniak, and their small daughter, Emma. Vogt also has two older daughters from previous relationships; the eldest, Isabelle, is a budding actress (father and daughter have recorded a CD of melodramas, including Strauss’s Enoch Arden).
Born in Düren, Germany, in 1970, Vogt was always forthright and down to earth, his all-encompassing musicianship powered by his tremendous physical and mental energy. In boyhood he was a keen footballer until his piano studies intervened. He became a pupil in Hanover of the piano guru Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. At 19 Vogt won second prize in the Leeds International Piano Competition. Simon Rattle conducted the final – and both the prize and Rattle’s enthusiasm, friendship and musical partnership thereafter helped to propel the young pianist to well-deserved promine
