The award comes endowed with DKK 500,000 (€67,000)
The 29-year-old Danish cellist Jonathan Swensen has been named the first recipient of the Olesen Music Award, a new Danish award recognising exceptional young classical musicians with the artistic vision and international potential to shape the future of classical music.
Swensen will receive the DKK 500,000 (€67,000) prize at a concert at Mogens Dahl Concert Hall in Copenhagen on 25 April 2027. In addition, he will receive support in strengthening his visibility and position among concert halls and orchestras across the Nordic region.
The prize was founded by the Erik & Susanna Olesen Charitable Foundation and will be awarded biennially to support outstanding young classical musicians at a pivotal stage in their careers.
’For me, receiving the Olesen Music Award is an enormous vote of confidence,’ said Swensen.
’It feels as though there are people who genuinely believe in me and want to help me. Music has the power to develop us as human beings, and the opportunity to reach more people through the Olesen Music Award is fantastic – and something I am incredibly grateful for.’
’Jonathan Swensen has a remarkable ability to make the music his own,’ said Stine Hasbirk, chair of the Olesen Music Award, violist and member of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
’He possesses extraordinary technical freedom, but technique is never the point – the music and its story always come first. He plays with an energy, intensity and immediacy that can create those rare moments when an audience loses all sense of time and place.’
Swensen received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2022 and was awarded joint first prize at the Naumburg International Cello Competition in 2024. His previous competition success include the Windsor International String Competition (2019), Khachaturian International Cello Competition (2018) and Young Concert Artists International Auditions (2018).
He has performed as a soloist with orchestras in Denmark and internationally and is currently part of a residency with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. He has appeared in recital at Wigmore Hall in London and Carnegie Hall in New York and performs regularly as a chamber musician throughout Europe and the US, including as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Swensen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music before continuing his studies with Torleif Thedéen at the Norwegian Academy of Music and Laurence Lesser at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he completed his artist diploma in 2023. He is currently artist in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, studying with Gary Hoffman.
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