Naumburg Presents 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition Winner Jonathan Swensen in recital.
Location: Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall
Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 at 7:30 PM
WORLD PREMIERE | Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello by Paul Wiancko
Featured as both Musical America’s “New Artist of the Month” and one of Gramophone Magazine’s “Ones to Watch,” rising star cellist Jonathan Swensen was awarded First Prize at the 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition in New York. He is also a recipient of a 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and First Prize winner of the 2019 Windsor International String Competition and the 2018 Khachaturian International Cello Competition.
Jonathan first fell in love with the cello after hearing the Elgar Concerto at the age of six and later made his concerto debut performing that very work with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música. Since then, he has appeared with leading orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Aarhus, Aalborg, and Odense, among others. The 2025–26 season brings returns to the Copenhagen Philharmonic and debuts with the Danish Chamber Orchestra, Danish Sinfonietta, and Puerto Rico Symphony.
Dedicated to curating programs that take listeners on a journey through the full expressive and technical range of his instrument, Jonathan seeks to expand the possibilities of the recital performance can communicate while challenging the usual limits of a soloist’s mental and physical endurance. The season also includes his recital debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall and Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, following acclaimed debuts at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater and New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. He has also performed at Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Morgan Library & Museum, and the Krannert Center’s Foellinger Great Hall, and has appeared at festivals including Tivoli Festival, Copenhagen Summer Festival, Chamberfest Cleveland, Krzyżowa-Music, Vancouver Recital Society, San Francisco Performances, Music@Menlo, La Jolla Summerfest, and Newport Classical. In 2024, he joined the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
September 2022 saw the release of Jonathan’s debut recording ‘Fantasia’, on Champs Hill Records, an album of works for solo cello, including Bent Sørensen’s ‘Farewell Fantasia’, composed for and dedicated to Jonathan and which he premiered in 2021, The album received rave reviews on its release, including from Gramophone, BBC Music, and The Strad which printed “An exciting young talent emerges. I would gladly buy a ticket to see Swensen on the strength of this appealing calling card.”
In his native Denmark, Jonathan has been recognized with the Musikanmelderringens Artist Prize (2020), the Jacob Gades Scholarship (2019), the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize (2017), and First Prize at the Danish String Competition (2016). A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Music, he continued his studies with Torleif Thedéen at the Norwegian Academy of Music and with Laurence Lesser at the New England Conservatory, where he received his Artist Diploma in 2023. In 2024, he became an artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium working with Gary Hoffman.
