Erling Blöndal Bengtsson

Erling Blöndal Bengtsson (March 8, 1932 – June 6, 2013 Ann Arbor, Michigan) was a Danish cellist. Born in Copenhagen, Bengtsson gave his first public performance there in 1936, when he was four years old. He was admitted at the age of sixteen to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Gregor Piatigorsky, who engaged him as a teaching assistant in 1949. From 1950 to 1953, Bengtsson taught his own cello class at the Institute, before being appointed to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. In 1980, he became a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. He returned to America in 1990 and taught at the University of Michigan School of Music until his retirement from academia in 2006.