THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Lars Vogt
Shortly before his death in early September, the pianist spoke to Jessica Duchen about living with cancer and grabbing every chance to record, perform and conduct while he could
About a week before this issue went to press, there came the news we had been fearing: Lars Vogt had died from cancer at the age of 51.
I had spoken to him in July 2022 while he was in hospital near his home city of Nuremberg, and found him in good spirits. He was undergoing an experimental gene-therapy treatment, part of a new pharmaceutical study. ‘Being told I could participate in it was a little bit like winning the lottery,’ he remarked. Well aware that it might not be a cure, he hoped it could ‘at least win some time’. I asked whether he was feeling up to being interviewed. ‘Sure,’ he joked. ‘I’m not doing anything else…’
The illness was diagnosed following tests in February 2021: the doctors found secondaries in Vogt’s liver, then traced the origins of the metastasised cancer in and, about a month before his death, a heart-rending film in Zsolt Bognár’s series .
