Iveta Apkalna

The Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna, who was born in 1976 in Rēzekne, studied piano and organ at the Jāzeps Vītols Academy of Music in Riga until 1999. She then continued her studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she earned a concert diploma in piano, before spending three years in Ludger Lohmann’s organ soloist class at the Stuttgart University of Music. She won the Royal Bank Calgary International Organ Competition in London in 2002 and, in 2003, garnered first prize along with four special awards at the Third International Mikael Tariverdiev Organ Competition in Kaliningrad. Nowadays, she performs worldwide as a concert organist in prestigious concert series and major festivals, collaborating with such orchestras as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. She has worked with esteemed conductors including Claudio Abbado, Gustavo Dudamel, Mariss Jansons, Paavo Järvi, Joana Mallwitz, Andris Nelsons, Sir Antonio Pappano, and Franz Welser-Möst. In 2017, as the titular organist of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, she inaugurated its Klais organ. During the 2024-25 season, she is the portrait artist at the Cologne Philharmonie, performs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, undertakes an Asia tour, and has engagements at the Rheingau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bratislava, and Helsinki Festivals. Iveta Apkalna has released 15 CDs to date and has been twice honored with the Echo Klassik Award. In her homeland, she has received the Great Latvian Music Award four times, was decorated with the Order of the Three Stars, and was named Latvia’s cultural ambassador. She is also the founder and artistic director of the ORGANismi organ festival, which has been held in her hometown of Rēzekne since 2015.

Lucerne Festival debut on 31 March 2012 in Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass under Mariss Jansons.

March 2025