Pieter Wispelwey bio

Pieter Wispelwey (Haarlem, 1962) is a Dutch cello player. Pieter Wispelwey was born in the Netherlands and grew up with his two younger brothers in Santpoort, where his parents still live. At the age of 19 he moved into a 17th century house on the Noordermarkt, Amsterdam where he currently resides. Pieter's diverse musical personality is rooted in his training. From a very early age he was exposed to the sounds of his father's amateur string quartet when they rehearsed at the Wispelwey home. Later on he took lessons from Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam, followed by studies with Paul Katz in the USA and William Pleeth in the UK. Dicky Boeke encouraged him to listen to as much music as possible, instilling in Pieter an early love for Renaissance music (especially Italian and English madrigalists), as well as the German Lied. These sources, in particular the performances of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, have remained a constant inspiration for Wispelwey. In 1990 his first recording with Channel Classics, the Bach Cello Suites won considerable acclaim and in 1992 he was the first cellist ever to receive the Netherlands Music Prize, given to the most promising young musician in the Netherlands. This set him off on an auspicious career. Wispelwey has always been at home on the modern cello with metal and/or gut strings as well as on the baroque 4 - and 5 string cello. Therefore he is able to play a repertoire ranging from Bach to Elliott Carter, drawing on a palette of sounds and colours available from his range of instruments, string set-ups and bows. Having grown up in an age and in a country where hearing period instruments was very much the norm for concert-goers, Pieter developed a conviction that, under the right conditions, much 18th and 19th century music sounds far better on gut strings than on metal. However he is not a purist in the sense that he will happily play a modern cello if playing conditions are less than ideal for a period instrument (no fortepiano, too big a hall, too hot, too humid, too dry acoustically etc.) Recitals have always occupied a major part in Pieter's concert diary. As a recitalist with piano, he has all the main repertoire at his disposal which is always ready for performance, often at very short notice. He is a flexible musician with a greatly diversified schedule. He has appeared as recitalist all over the world including the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Wigmore Hall (London), Chatelet (Paris), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires) and Sydney Opera House. Wispelwey has appeared with many orchestras and ensembles both with and without a conductor. Notable projects without conductor have been the touring and recording of the Schumann and Shostakovich cello concertos with the Australian Chamber Orchestra under their musical director Richard Tognetti which he much enjoyed. He has also appeared with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Russian National Symphony, Camerata Academica Salzburg, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and others and has recorded with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Wispelwey considers himself extremely lucky in that, thanks to the support of the label Channel Classics, he is able to record his own choice of repertoire with artists and orchestras of his own choice. This freedom has resulted in records with unusual repertoire such as Schubert violin sonatinas, Chopin Waltzes, Mazurkas and Preludes and the Bach Gamba sonatas played with his own personal intrumentations - all titles that would have been hard to record with the major labels. This would also be true for his 2nd recording of the Bach suites recording, the decision to record the Schumann and Shostakovich cello concerti without conductor and his recent plan to re-record the Brahms and Beethoven sonatas. Channel Classics offers him the opportunity for complete control over the production, the editing and the post-production processes, down to writing texts for the CD booklets. In the last decade he has been regarded as one of the leading cello soloists. This was not always so Crucial for the broadening of his reputation was that, from the mid-nineties, Channel Classics was able to organise the recording of the main concerto repertoire. For the near future everything is set to record remaining major works, like the 2nd Shostakovich, the Prokofiev, Dutilleux, Britten and Walton.

Source: Wikipedia