Léonie Sonning Talent Prize recipient 2026
Pianist
Before Rune Leicht Lund became a pianist, he was a competitive dancer. For several years he danced in competitions and even became Danish champion in his age group. But it was difficult to find a partner who was just as ambitious, and his mother suggested that he might try the piano instead. There, you are in charge of the whole thing yourself. So he did, and it quickly took over.
Rune grew up in Randers in a musical family. His mother plays the clarinet professionally, and his father used to play the violin before later changing course and becoming a doctor. There was always music in the house, and even while Rune was still in his mother’s womb, he heard her playing in the orchestra. But it was only at the age of eight that he himself sat down at the piano.
Quite soon afterwards, his mother and uncle, who is also a pianist, took him to the national Steinway Competition, where he played a Bach invention and the theme from Indiana Jones. He had only been playing for six months and did not make it any further, but at the competition he heard pupils from the Gradus Piano School in Aarhus perform, and that inspired him deeply. Shortly afterwards, he himself began studying with Martin Lysholm Jepsen at Gradus, and it became a partnership that lasted almost ten years.
“Martin Lysholm is the teacher who truly opened up the world of music to me,” Rune says. He vividly remembers his first Gradus concert, where as a small boy he played his short pieces and listened to the older pupils, who were nearly ten years older than he was. Among them was the later Sonning Talent Prize recipient Gustav Piekut. “I thought: one fine day I am going to play those works. And later I did.”
Martin Lysholm was not just present in lessons. He organised concert trips, accompanied pupils to competitions abroad and ran his own festival in Aarhus, where he invited international stars. Rune had lessons several times a week and did not need a separate pre-college programme alongside them. Gradus was more than enough in itself. On the other hand, it meant many drives between Randers and Aarhus, and there was not much time left for anything else.
At the age of ten, Rune won his first international competition, and at twelve he made his debut as a soloist in Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, first with Randers Chamber Orchestra and later with Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and the DR Symphony Orchestra. Competitions have always suited him. “I have always been a bit of a sore loser, which only added fuel to the fire,” he admits with a laugh.
When Rune had finished ninth grade at the age of sixteen, he skipped upper-secondary school and went straight to Vienna to study. Older fellow students from Gradus had done the same, so the model was already there. At Musik und Kunst Privatuniversitaet he studied with Professor Jura Margulis, but the timing was unfortunate: Covid broke out just as he was due to begin, and his first semester was postponed.
Despite the lockdown, Rune’s first two years in Vienna were good. He received real lessons behind plastic screens placed over the grand pianos, attended masterclasses and discovered the Viennese musical environment from its beautiful side. But when the city opened up, that environment proved surprisingly closed to young students. “It is a snobbish, closed circle that is hard to break into,” Rune observes. He completed his bachelor’s degree, but then it was time to move on.
Rune is now studying for his master’s degree at the Ingesund School of Music in the small Swedish town of Arvika, deep in the forest, with Professor Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist. It is a small, international piano class of around ten students from all over the world, with a teacher who invests herself in each individual. Exactly what Rune needs.
And when he is about to go on stage – for instance at the prestigious Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht in January 2026, where he was among the final eight – he always checks his right trouser pocket. His handkerchief has to be there, ready to wipe fingers, forehead and keys. Without it, he feels uneasy. “It is a kind of ritual,” says Rune. “But it also has a practical purpose.”
