Andreas Brantelid

Andreas Brantelid is among Scandinavia’s top cellists, with an impressive record of concerto appearances with major orchestras in many countries. He is also active as a chamber music player.
Brantelid was born on October 8, 1987, in Copenhagen, Denmark. His father gave him his first cello lessons, and he made such rapid progress that he was able to debut as a concerto soloist at age 14 with the Royal Danish Orchestra, playing Elgar’s difficult Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85. Major prizes helped Brantelid sustain the momentum he had built up as a prodigy. He won the Eurovision Young Musicians Contest in 2006 as a representative of Sweden, and he was Denmark Radio’s Artist of the Year in 2007. In 2008, he received the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, and he was part of the European Concert Organization’s Rising Star Tour in 2008-2009. From 2008 to 2011, Brantelid was a BBC New Generation Artist. The list of top orchestras with which Brantelid has performed is long and varied, including the London Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, in addition to all the major orchestras in the Nordic countries. He has played under such conductors as Vasily Petrenko, Thomas Dausgaard, and Sakari Oramo. Brantelid is also an enthusiastic chamber player whose frequent collaborators include pianist Bengt Forsberg and violinist Nils-Erik Sparf. He has also played in a trio with violinist Benjamin Schmid and pianist Christian Ihle Hadland and performed with the likes of Paul Badura-Skoda, Joshua Bell, and Daniel Barenboim.
Brantelid made his recording debut in 2008 on the EMI Classics label with a recording of concertos by Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, and Schumann with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. He made several more recordings for EMI before moving to BIS in 2015 for a recording of Grieg's Cello Sonata and Percy Grainger's Scandinavian Suite. After other chamber music recordings on BIS, Brantelid and Forsberg released the album Russian Tales, featuring music by Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Myaskovsky, on the Naxos label in 2020. ~ James Manheim