Bruce Vogt

Brief biography

Bruce Vogt appears regularly in concert across Canada and also inspires audiences abroad. He toured Japan for the fifteenth time in October of 2019 and has toured China three times, teaching, lecturing, and playing concerts in a number of cities. He has given solo recitals and chamber music concerts in European centers including London, Oxford, Norwich, Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Weimar, Wiesbaden, Krakow, Trieste, Sophia, Oslo, and Prague.

Vogt grew up in Southern Ontario, where he studied with Damjana Bratuz and Anton Kuerti. He later studied in the U.S. and Europe with such celebrated musicians as Gyorgy Sebok, Louis Kentner, Fou Ts'Ong and Dario de Rosa.

Vogt’s repertoire is diverse, encompassing music from the sixteenth century to the present. He has long championed the music of contemporary composers, and has commissioned and premiered a number of new works by such Canadian luminaries as Murray Adaskin and Alfred Fisher. He is also a dedicated performer on period instruments; one of his recordings features music of Robert Schumann performed on a restored 1864 Erard. Other recordings include two volumes of the music of Franz Liszt, which established for him an enviable reputation as a Liszt interpreter. In 2011—the bicentenary of the composer’s birth—he recorded two subsequent Liszt CDs.

In addition to his career as a soloist and chamber musician, Vogt is Professor at the University of Victoria. Because he sees working with teachers and young pianists as an important commitment, he lectures widely, leads master classes and workshops, and adjudicates for festivals. 

In recent years he has been invited more frequently to indulge another passion—presenting and improvising accompaniments to great films of the silent era. He has lectured on and otherwise introduced films by Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Griffith, Murnau and others. He has been invited to offer these presentations in Germany, England, France, Italy, Romania, Japan and the USA, as well as across Canada.

Media reviews

“TECHNICAL PERFECTION PAIRED WITH EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVENESS… compositions from Mozart, Chopin, Liszt resounded with seldom-heard perfection… What is apparent in his playing is the joy he takes in giving to others what he has so dazzlingly mastered…” Usinger Anzeiger Altweilnau, Germany)

"RARE GRANDEUR...I have never heard [Liszt's] Norma Fantasy played with such consummate largesse...I was mesmerized by Vogt's sheer control. In Liszt's Dante Sonata the structure of the work was never exposed and the final triumph of the piece rang from the piano with spine chilling inevitability." The Times (London, UK) 

"CONCERT OF THE YEAR...Splendidly subtle readings. Vogt made us listen to music that we might have missed, and some familiar items which we heard anew." Monday Magazine(Victoria) 

"Le Piano Virtuose...the audience was literally enraptured." Le Republicain (Paris) 

"Vogt's performance of Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11 superbly captured the improvisatory character of the music." The Globe and Mail (Toronto)