Denis Patkovic

Denis Patkovic

Think of the accordion and you're likely to picture buskers playing traditional folk music on the streets of European and Russian towns and cities. But the free-reed instrument, patented in 1829 by Austrian inventor Cyrill Demian, has been remodelled as a classical instrument.

'There are two different types of piano accordion,' says classical accordionist Denis Patkovic, 'with standard bass for entertainment music, and free bass so I can play the same tune on the left as the right.'

The free bass model emerged in the 1940s and in the intervening 60 years has allowed musicians such as 27-year-old Patkovic to expand the accordion repertoire to include classical works including Bach's Goldberg Variations, which he has recorded for his debut CD.

Patkovic was born in Calw, Germany into a Yugoslavian family, which, he says, influenced his musical choice early on: 'In the Balkan countries the accordion is the main instrument so as a child I listened the whole time to folk music from there. I was so fascinated with this instrument that by the age of five or six I felt only to play accordion and nothing else.'

'The most crazy thing is when someone asks me, "You can really study accordion?"'

Learning the accordion, he says in his first English-language interview, can be difficult: 'There is a bellow between the sides that you have to open and close, and at the same time you have to move your left hand and move your body. It's not so easy to combine everything.'

He adds: 'And the most crazy thing is when someone asks me, "You can really study accordion? Is it really possible? Why do you have to study?"'

At 13 Patkovic took up free bass accordion, having already decided that he wanted to play for more than just a hobby. He later studied at the music universities of Trossingen and Würzburg before his big break: a scholarship allowing him a year's study of performance practice of baroque music, with special focus on Bach, at Helsinki's Sibelius Academy.

Patkovic stayed on at the academy following his exchange year - and, a year into his PhD, the first fruits of his labour have emerged in the form of his June-released debut disc on the Hänssler Classic label.

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