»An uncommonly fine poet with an enormous paw, not a pianist, not a harpsichordist or an organist, not a conductor or a composer, but somebody belonging to the category that we might term that of a universal musician through and through« – this is how Rasmus van Rijn most recently described Aurel Dawidiuk. Born on 20 September 2000 in Hanover; introduced to the piano and the violin at the age of six; a member of the Hanover Boys’ Choir for a number of years; a student in the program for young talents in Roland Krüger’s piano class at the Hanover University of Music, Theater, and Media beginning in 2014 as well as an organ student under Martin Sander at the Detmold College of Music – these are the first stages in a career that personalities such as Gabriele Leporatti, Ulrike Adler, and Hatto Beyerle have successfully accompanied as mentors.
The results so far are impressive indeed. Guest performances at the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin, Bremen Broadcast Studio, Essen Philharmonic Hall, Konzerthaus in Dortmund, Opéra National de Lorraine, Church of St. James in Lübeck, and Paderborn Cathedral: concerts with ensembles such as the German Chamber Philharmonic of Bremen, Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Köln, Eroica of Berlin, Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Lorraine, Orchestra da Camera del Trasimeno, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Thessaloniki City Orchestra, and Bern Symphony Orchestra; »foreign tours of duty« on the organ in Russia (Yakutsk), Northern Ireland, France (Toulouse), and Austria (ORF Vienna) …
The number of competitions that the musician, who is currently twenty-one years old, has won is no less impressive. He won a total of seven national first prizes at »Jugend musiziert« competitions alone, finished in first place at the International Piano Youth Competition in Essen (2015), Schumann Competition in Zwickau (2016), and London Organ Competition (2019), and emerged triumphant at the International Competition for Young Organists in Moscow in 2019. In July of the same year he scored a »complete nine« at Hamburg’s renowned TONALi Piano Competition: the Principal Prize, the Public Prize, the Christoph Eschenbach Prize, and six other special prizes.
Aurel Dawidiuk, the recipient of scholarships from the Jürgen Ponto Foundation, Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, Carl Bechstein Foundation, Jugend Musiziert Foundation of Lower Saxony, Richard Wagner Foundation, and Mozart Society of Dortmund, has studied orchestral conducting with Johannes Schlaefli, piano with Till Fellner, and composition with Burkhard Kinzler at the Zurich College of the Arts since 2020. In addition, he receives instruction in organ from Martin Sander at the Basel Music Academy. In 2021 he was accepted to the German Music Council’s Conducting Forum for top young conducting talents. Here master classes taught by Paavo Järvi, Joana Mallwitz, Pierre-André Valade, and others have worked very much to the young musician’s advantage.
