Lukas Geniusas, Piano

“Geniušas plays with a prizewinner’s brilliance, yet with a mature ability to recreate a work’s architecture, and an expressiveness that doesn’t overtly draw attention to itself.” The Guardian

Born in Moscow in 1990, Lukas Geniušas started piano studies at the age of five in the preparatory department of the Chopin Music College in Moscow and went on to graduate with top honours in 2008. He was born into a family of musicians, a fact which played a major role in Lukas' musical education, particularly through the mentorship of his grandmother, Vera Gornostaeva, a prominent teacher and professor at the Moscow Conservatory. This early development helped Lukas to win the Gina Bachauer Piano Competition in Utah and the Silver medal at the Chopin International Piano Competition in 2010. Two years later he received the German Piano Award in Frankfurt am Main. His recent victory, and one of the most important, is the Silver Medal at the XV Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2015.

Lukas has already appeared with numerous orchestras, including the Hamburg Symphony, Duisburg Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Kremerata Baltica, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Andrey Boreyko, Saulius Sondeckis, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Antoni Wit, Rafael Payare, Roman Kofman, and Dmitry Liss, to name but a few. His international career has taken Lukas to prestigious venues and festivals throughout the world, including the Rheingau, Ruhr and Lockenhaus Music Festivals, the Auditorium du Louvre and Wigmore Hall, as well as to major concert halls in Russia and South America. He recently performed at the La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival and made his début at the Verbier Festival with solo and chamber recitals. In the 2016/17 season he returns to the Sala Verdi in Milan, Mariinsky-3 and the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and performs début recitals at the Montreal Pro Musica series and Washington Phillips Collection.

Highlights of his forthcoming engagements also include performances with Charles Dutoit and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra under Alexander Lazarev in Yokohama, as well as with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Lukas' musical interests are extensive. He explores a wide range of music, from Baroque to works by contemporary composers; his repertoire runs from Beethoven's complete piano concerti to Hindemith's “Ludus Tonalis” cycle. He also has a keen interest in the Russian repertoire, with emphasis on Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.

Lukas loves to play chamber music. He is an extremely inquisitive performer who enjoys working on new pieces by modern composers, as well as reviving rarely performed repertoire. At the age of 15, he was awarded a “Young Talents” federal grant from the Russian Federation and two years later received the “Gifted Youth of the 21st Century” award. Lukas has since garnered much praise and many awards in recognition of his talent, also in his native Lithuania, where he gives concerts regularly and is recognized as an outstanding performer. Since 2015, Lukas has been a featured artist of "Looking at the stars" a philanthropy project based in Toronto, whose purpose is to bring classical music to institutions and organizations (prisons, hospitals and shelters) whose members may not have an opportunity to experience it live in a traditional setting.