- Pieter Wispelwey
Pieter Wispelwey (born
1962 ,Haarlem ) is a Dutch cello player. In 1992 he was the first cellist to receive theNetherlands Music Prize , given to the most promising young musician in the Netherlands. In the last decade he has been regarded as one of the leading cello soloists.Fact|date=March 2007 This was not always so: in his twenties Pieter was considered by some to be both an enfant terrible and was typecast as a baroque cellist by others.Pieter Wispelwey was born in the
Netherlands and grew up inSantpoort . Since the age of 19 he has resided inAmsterdam . From a very early age he was exposed to the sounds of his father's amateurstring quartet when they rehearsed at the Wispelwey home. Later on he took lessons fromDicky Boeke andAnner Bylsma in Amsterdam, followed by studies withPaul Katz in the USA andWilliam Pleeth in the UK.In
1990 his first recording withChannel Classics , the Bach Cello Suites, received considerable acclaim. The support of Channel Classics has enabled him to record his own choice of repertoire, with his own choice of artists and orchestras. This has resulted in records with unusual repertoire such asSchubert violinsonatina s,Chopin Waltz es,mazurka s and preludes and the Bach Gamba sonatas played with his own personal instrumentations.Wispelwey has appeared as a
recital ist all over the world including at theConcertgebouw (Amsterdam),Wigmore Hall (London),Chatelet (Paris),Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires) andSydney Opera House . He 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. He has also appeared with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, theBBC 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 is comfortable playing the modern cello with either metal or
gut strings and also on thebaroque 4 and 5 string cello. This allows him a repertoire ranging fromBach toElliott Carter . Growing up exposed to period instruments as a norm Pieter developed a conviction that, under the right conditions, much 18th- and 19th-century music sounds superior when played on gut strings than on metal. But he is not a purist but rather a practical musician and plays a modern cello if conditions make it sound better than a period instrument.External links
* [http://www.pieterwispelwey.com www.pieterwispelwey.com]
* [http://www.cello.org/Newsletter/Articles/wispelwey/wispelwey.htm Interview at cello.org]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.