Vid Veljak Cello Vid Veljak (1996) stood out on the Croatian and international scene as one of the youngest and most gifted cellists in the field of chamber music, but also as a soloist focused on the performance of contemporary and experimental music.
He started studying the cello at the age of three under the guidance of Tatjana Skljarenko, and soon after with Mauro Šestan in Rijeka. His talent was noticed very early on by the prominent cellist and pedagogue Valter Dešpalj and invited him to his class at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, where at the age of 14 he successfully passed the entrance exam and graduated in 2017. From 2012 to 2015, he studied in parallel at the International Music Academy academy of the Principality of Liechtenstein in the class of Jens Peter Maintz and V. Dešpalj. He also studied in the class of Romain Garioud in Paris from 2016 to 2018. He attended master classes of eminent cellists such as Monika Leskovar, Giovanni Sollima, Enrico Bronzi, Laszlo Fenyö, Miklós Perényi, Gustavo Tavares, Enrico Bronzi, Michael Flaxman, Xenia Janković, among others. He has won numerous competitions, including the Antonio Janigro International Competition in Poreč and Daleki Akorda in Split, and was a finalist in the prestigious Guilhermina Suggio Competition in Portugal in 2015.
He has performed as a soloist with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Zagreb Soloists, the Rijeka Chamber Orchestra, and the Croatian Symphony Orchestra radio and television, the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra and the Cantus Ensemble. He performed in Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Liechtenstein, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and the People’s Republic of China.
He is the founder and member of the Rijeka Piano Trio with pianist Filip Fak and violinist Krunoslav Marić.
He is also a member of the international contemporary music ensemble Synchronos. During his studies, in addition to perfecting the canonical repertoire, he focused on performing contemporary music for the cello, performing numerous Croatian composers, many of whom dedicated their works to him (eg Tomislav Oliver’s Asterión cello concerto).
He distinguished himself with solo recitals, performing some of the most complex works for cello with electronics at the Music Tribune in Opatija in 2018 and at the Zagreb Music Biennale in 2021, for which the concert was recorded.
He has been the leader of the cello section in the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra since March 2019, with which he regularly performs as a soloist. Since 2019, he has launched the Resonance(s) project dedicated to recording works for cello solo (and electronics) by Croatian composers, whose goal is to promote 20th 20. and 21st century compositions and encourage the creation of new works. He released two albums with this project. In 2022, the album Resonance(s) II won the Porin discography award (and was nominated in 4 serious music categories).
Vid Veljak, cello