Niels Viggo Bentzon

Born in Copenhagen in 1919, died in Frederiksberg in 2000; Niels Viggo Bentzon was a composer, pianist and writer. At the Royal Danish Academy of Music he studied with Emilius Bangert and Knud Jeppesen among others and passed his examinations in theory and piano in 1941 and in organ in 1942. From 1945 he taught at the Jutland Conservatory of Music in Aarhus, from 1950 to 1988 at the conservatory in Copenhagen, from 1960 as lecturer in theory and composition. He wrote more than 650 works, among them symphonies, operas, piano and chamber music; as a pianist he played music by Arnold Schönberg and Paul Hindemith alongside his own works. In 1965 he received the Carl-Nielsen-Preis. On the Cybele album Arnold Schönberg: Die Prinzessin (2008) he plays the piano part of the Suite op. 25.