Pieter Wispelwey

Pieter Wispelwey is equally at ease on the modern or period cello. His acute stylistic awareness, combined with a truly original interpretation and a phenomenal technical mastery, has won the hearts of critics and public alike in repertoire ranging from JS Bach to Schnittke, Elliott Carter and works composed for him.

Together with Paolo Giacometti, Wispelwey is the recipient of the 2019 Brahmspreis in recognition of the duo’s groundbreaking interpretations of the composer’s music, which culminated in an exciting recording venture committing the complete duo works by Schubert and Brahms to disc. The final instalment of the 6 CDs was released in May 2019 by Evil Penguin Records Classic.

Wispelwey’s other chamber music collaborators include pianists Cédric Tiberghien and Alasdair Beatson as well as harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, and he appears as a guest artist with a number of string quartets including the Australian String Quartet, the Doric String Quartet and the Dudok Quartet.

Wispelwey’s career spans five continents and he has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, St Paul’s Chamber Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon, Tokyo Philharmonic, Sapporo Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, London Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, BBC Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Danish National Radio Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Camerata Salzburg.

With regular recital appearances in London (Wigmore Hall, Kings Place), Paris (Châtelet, Louvre), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw), Brussels (Bozar), Berlin (Konzerthaus), Milan (Società del Quartetto), Buenos Aires (Teatro Colon), Sydney (The Utzon Room), Los Angeles (Walt Disney Hall) and New York (Lincoln Center), Wispelwey has established a reputation as one of the most charismatic recitalists on the circuit.

He has released three full recordings of Bach’s Suites for Cello three times (most recently on EPR Classic). His performances of the complete suites during the course of one evening form a major strand of his recital appearances, an accomplishment that has attracted major critical acclaim throughout Europe and the US. “On paper it is a feat requiring brilliance, stamina and perhaps a bit of hubris. In practice Mr. Wispelwey proved himself impressively up to the challenge, offering performances as eloquent as they were provocative” (New York Times).

Pieter Wispelwey’s impressive discography of about 50 albums, available on Channel Classic, Onyx and EPR, has attracted major international awards. In 2023, he released two albums In Memoriam, dedicated to his son Dorian, who tragically died in 2022. The first of these is a rerelease of the three greatest Schubert Violin-Piano pieces and the Trockne Blumen Variations, Schubert having played a great role in Dorian’s life. The second, the Scordatura album, features two works in darker, alternative tunings: Bach’s Fifth Suite and Kodaly’s Sonata.

Born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, Wispelwey studied with Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam and later with Paul Katz in the USA and William Pleeth in the UK. Pieter is Professor of Cello at Robert Schumann Musikhochschule Düsseldorf and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He plays on a 1760 JB Guadagnini cello and a 1710 Barak Norman baroque cello.