A winner of numerous international and national piano awards and fellowships, Matthew Bengtson is a phenomenon in other fields as well. Mr. Bengtson has a unique combination of musical talents ranging from extraordinary pianist, to composer, analyst, and scholar of period music and performance. Matthew Bengtson is in demand as both a soloist and chamber musician. In 1998 he won the La Gesse Fellowship, sponsored by the Princess Cecilia di Medici. Under that aegis, he was presented in concert in France and Italy, at the French Embassy in Washington, DC, and at Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello. The La Gesse Foundation has also presented Mr. Bengtson in solo recitals at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York City. He won the 2000 Otto R. Stahl Memorial Prize at Cornell University, and was a Timothy Faron Award and Braverman Grant recipient at Harvard University.
Mr. Bengtson began concertizing in his native Pennsylvania where he also performed his own compositions. He has soloed numerous times on The Star Series of Reading, and with the Reading and Pottstown Symphonies, having won the Reading Concerto Competition and the Pottstown Symphony Kathryn E. MacPhail Concerto Competition. An advocate of both contemporary and rarely performed music, he is in command of a diverse repertoire ranging from Rameau and Bach to Boulez and Ligeti. In 2001, Mr. Bengtson presented "The Mazurkas of Karol Szymanowski" as a Lowens Award finalist for The American Musicological Society, Capital Chapter.
While an undergraduate at Harvard University, Mr. Bengtson studied piano performance with Patricia Zander of the New England Conservatory. He earned his MM and DMA degrees at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, studying with Ann Schein. His musical curiosity took him in diverse directions as he has pursued his education. During his Harvard years, he also worked with Stephen Drury, especially for contemporary piano literature, and Robert Levin, for an integrated approach to performance with analysis and performance practice. He twice attended the Aspen Music Festival, studying with Herbert Stessin and Ann Schein. He has participated in the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance (SICPP) at New England Conservatory, the Classical Era Workshop and Baroque Performance Institute (BPI) at Oberlin Conservatory. He minored in harpsichord at Peabody, studying with Webb Wiggins, and studied fortepiano and historical performance at Cornell University under the noted fortepianist Malcolm Bilson.
In Europe, he studied at the Internationale Sommerakademie 'Mozarteum' in Salzburg, Austria, with the French pianist Claude Helffer and performed in the Wiener Saal. At the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, he studied with Philippe Entremont, Philippe Bianconi and Frédéric Aguessy, and was awarded the Prix de la Ville de Fontainebleau for his excellence in performance. In addition to his extensive concertizing, Dr. Bengtson serves on the faculty of Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and on the piano staff at the Curtis Institute of Music. Besides his musical attainments, Matthew Bengtson was educated at Harvard University with a focus in mathematics and computer science. He is a scholar of Latin and Greek, a 3-handicap golfer and a chess master.
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