www.pieterwispelwey.com

DISCOGRAPHY

	Britten Cello Symphony; Cello Suite No. 1 (ONYX 4058) Flanders Symphony Orchestra/Seikyo Kim
	Schubert Duos with Paolo Giacometti (ONYX 4046) Duo in A D574 (arr Wispelwey), Sonata in A minor D821 'Arpeggione', Fantasy in C D934 (arr Wispelwey)
	Prokofiev, Crumb, Tcherepin (CCS27909) Sinfonia Concertante (live recording), sonata for solo cello, suite for solo cello.
	Walton cello concerto and Passacaglia, Bloch cello suite no1, Ligeti Sonata for solo cello, Britten Ciaconna from cello suite no 2 (ONYX 4042) *Editors Choice Gramophone, *5 stars BBC music magazine
	Shostakovich, Britten(CCS25308) Concerto no 2, 3rd solo suite
	Dvorak (CCS25807) Cello Concerto and Symphonic Variations with Ivan Fischer and The Budapest Festival Orchestra
	Brahms (CCS24707) Sonatas op38, op 78, 120 no1 with Dejan Lazic
	Beethoven (CCS22605) Complete sonatas and variations for piano and cello with Dejan Lazic
	Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten (CCS20003) Sonatas for Piano with Dejan Lazic
	Gubaidulina (CCS20904) The Canticle of the Sun with Collegium Vocale
	Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Three Suites for Violoncello Solo (CCS17198)
	Shostakovich and Kodaly (CCS15398)
	Chopin, Walzes, Preludes & Mazurkas Vol. 1 (CCS16298)
	Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Bruch (CCS16598)
	Brahms, Franck, Schumann Sonatas (CCS18698)
	Schubert Arpeggione Sonate, 3 Sonatinas Op. 37 (CCS09696)
	Vivaldi Concerti (CCS10097)
	Wispelwey & Giacometti Chopin Fauré Poulenc (CCS10797)
	Pieter Wispelwey Schumann Celloconcerto (CCS11097)
	Bach Cello Suites J.S. Bach, 6 suites for violoncello solo (CCS12298)
	Elgar Lutoslavski Cello Concertos (CCS12998)
	Bach Suites for Cello Solo (CCS01090)
	Bach Gamba Sonatas, Riddle Preludes, Baroque Perpetua (CCS14198)
	Hindemith Sessions Ligeti (CCS07495)
	Dvorak, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in b (CCS08695)
	Max Reger 3 suites for cello solo & works for cello and piano (CCS09596)
	Ludwig van Beethoven, Variations for violoncello and Pianoforte (CCS06494)
	Schubert String Quintet in C (CCS06794)
	Vivaldi 6 Cello Sonatas (CCS06294)
	Brahms Sonata in e minor, Op.38 - Sonata in F major Op. 99 (CCS05493)
	Beethoven The Compl. Sonatas for Pianoforte & Cello (CCS03592)
	Haydn Cello Concert in C & D, Symph. no. 104 (CCS07395)

VIDEOS

PIETER WISPELWEY- CELLO SUITES - J.S BACH

Pieter Wispelwey & Dejan Lazic - Beethoven

Pieter Wispelwey - Bach Cello Suite No. 2 in d minor - Sarabande

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Pieter Wispelwey, cello

Pieter Wispelwey is among the first of a generation of performers who are equally at ease on the modern or the 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.
Born in Haarlem, Netherlands, Wispelwey’s sophisticated musical personality is rooted in the training he received: from early years with Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam to Paul Katz in the USA and William Pleeth in Great Britain. In 1992 he became the first cellist ever to receive the Netherlands Music Prize, which is awarded to the most promising young musician in the Netherlands.

Highlights among future concerto performances include the Sydney Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, Sao Paulo Symphony, National Symphony of Ireland, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Musikkollegium Orchestra Winterthur, Edmonton Symphony, a tour in Scandinavia with the Muenchener Kammerorchester and in Belgium with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra.
Forthcoming recital appearances include duo projects with the forte-pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout (Vienna Konzerthaus, London Wigmore Hall, Bruges Concertgebouw), pianist Cedric Tiberghien (Paris Theatre des Champs-Elysees Paris, Madrid Auditorio Nacional, London Wigmore Hall), solo recitals in Paris (Louvre), London (LSO St Luke’s, Wigmore Hall), Boston (Celebrity Series), Dortmund (Konzerthaus), Melbourne Recital Hall, Tokyo (Topan Hall), Beijing (National Performing Arts Centre), Seoul, Athens (Megaron Hall), as well as festivals in Amsterdam (Prinsengracht), France (Toulon, Beauvais), Poland (Wratislavia Cantans), Israel (Eilat) and tours in Italy, Germany and the North America..
Pieter Wispelwey has been the artistic director of the Beauvais Cello Festival in France since 2009, drawing together some of the finest cellists on the circuit for a week of cello recitals, concertos and chamber music, featuring an exciting range of new music for the instrument.

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, 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, collaborating with conductors including Ivan Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jeffrey Tate, Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Philippe Herreweghe, Vassily Sinaisky, Vladimir Jurowski, Paavo Berglund, Louis Langrée, Marc Minkowski, Ton Koopman, Libor Pesek and Sir Roger Norrington.

With regular recital appearances in London (Wigmore Hall), Paris (Châtelet, Louvre), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw), Brussels (Bozar), Berlin (Konzerthaus), Milan (Societta 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
Pieter Wispelwey’s discography, available on Onyx and Channel Classics, displays an impressive line up of over twenty recordings, six of which attracted major international awards. His most recent releases include Walton’s Cello Concerto (Sydney Symphony/Jeffrey Tate), Prokofiev’s Symphonie Concertante (Rotterdam Philharmonic/Vassily Sinaisky), the Britten Cello Symphony – all recorded live - and a unique set of works by Schubert for cello and piano (Fantasy D934, Grand Duo D574, Arpeggione Sonata), recorded on period instruments.
His next release will be a recital disc featuring the Mendelssohn cello sonatas and a selection of Chopin Waltzes arranged for cello and piano, due out in May 2011 on Onyx.

Pieter Wispelwey plays on a 1760 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini cello and a 1710 Rombouts baroque cello.

CONCERT REVIEWS

'It was in cellist Pieter Wispelwey that the music at last found a refreshing energy, fixed between snarling ferocity and cavalier ease. The effect he wrought on Dvorak's Cello Concerto was extraordinary; all the well-known melodies were present but in Wispelwey's hands they became stories recounted through the eyes of an older, worldlier raconteur.'

The Scotsman, Feb 2011
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

'Wispelwey gave a stunning performance, playing
it as if it had been written for him. He played the outer sections of the work boldly... while infusing the slow middle section with beautifully crafted
lyricism and soft expressions'

The Deseret News, Dec 2010
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Abravanel Hall. (Saint Saens Cello Concerto no.1)

'The appearance of the evening's guest soloist, cellist Peter Wispelwey, in the B minor Cello Concerto was equally classy, at one point cooling the music to such a magical whisper, I felt it might float completely away. Wispelwey was again a captivating soloist in [Sallinen's Chamber Music VIII]'

The Scotsman, October 2010.
The Scottish Ensemble, City Halls Glasgow

'The solo cello never lost its intense rapport with the ensemble [in Sallinen's Chamber Music VIII] even when clearly leading the way or in the magnificent cadenza which mirrored the mood of the whole work perfectly. More overtly virtuosic was the Concerto for Cello and Strings in B minor RV424 by Vivaldi. Dazzling playing by Wispelwey in the outer movements was matched by the seductiveness of his cello in the slow movement'

The Herald, 13 October 2010
The Scottish Ensemble, Aberdeen Music Hall

'Performers with Wispelwey’s commitment, intelligence, and range of expressive abilities are members of a rare species indeed. Tanglewood was graced with the presence of a great master on this evening, and those who shared the privilege of being in the audience will not soon forget it.'

The Boston Musical Intelligence, 25 July 2010
The complete Bach suites, Tanglewood Festival****

‘Glasgow Concert Hall’s Romantic Bach series continued with a recital from cellist Pieter Wispelwey, who is equally at home in a modern repertoire or in the baroque. Performing Bach in the context of works for unaccompanied cello by later composers [Boch, Reger, Walton, Britten], Wispelwey used a modern instrument, yet his period experience was clearly evident in his approach, both in his range of timbres and the way in which phrasing and overall shape took precedence over the beauty of individual notes. Wispelwey is an understated performer: his Bach’s C minor Cello Suite was all the more intimate as a result, revealing the spontaneity of a musician playing for himself.’

The Herald, 28 February 2010
Solo recital / Glasgow Concert Hall / 28 February 2010

‘The most striking aspect of Mr. Wispelwey’s Brahms is that it is not about the overwhelming richness of the cello’s tone but about shape and intensity. Scarcely a phrase was played matter-of-factly. Articulation, dynamics and color always seemed carefully considered[.]’

New York Times, 25 January 2010
Duo recital with Paolo Giacometti / Alice Tully Hall, New York / 24 January 2010

‘The evening’s highlight was cello concerto. Pieter Wispelwey is a player with a tone that’s both strong and honeyed, and he took the black, manic intensity of the opening movement in his stride. The calm desolation of the slow movement was equally finely caught, and there was a riveting intensity in the extended cadenza and the boisterously twisted finale.’

Irish Times, 13 October 2009
Shostakovich Cello Concerto no.1 – RTE National Symphony Orchestra/Michal Dworzynski, 9 October 2009

'[In Beethoven’s Sonata in G minor, Op.5] Wispelwey varied his sound all the way from a distant keening to a bass-drum thump; playing from memory, his mastery allowed a bracing amount of moment-to-moment tonal and interpretive spontaneity without ever sacrificing the overall dramatic thread or tension. Bezuidenhout matched him, buzzing through Beethoven’s show-off intricacies with groove and flair. […] In the Variations [on ‘Ein Mädchen oder Wedbchen’ from Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’], the players shifted the mercurial timing toward humor, the heavy accents comic bluster, the lyrical threads sly asides. The F-major Sonata adopts a sunnier mien than the G minor, but Wispelwey and Bezuidenhout still found space for high-stakes drama, the two goading each other to ever more impudent virtuosity in the Rondo finale…an exhilarating concert.’
The Boston Globe, 15 June 2009
Duo recital with Kristian Bezuidenhout / Boston Early Music Festival / 12 June 2009

RECORDING REVIEWS

'it's thrilling to find a recording that shines a light into [the Cello Symphony's] aqueous depths: here is a reading of wonderful precision, colour and vitality. The Dutch cellist has long been a fine interpreter of the Britten Suites, and here he brings an innate understanding of Britten's voice, liberating both its power to shock and to sing with virile energy, finesse and a seemingly elastic bow.'

BBC Music Magazine October 2010
Britten Cello Symphony, Suite no.1 Flanders Symphony Orchestra, Seikyo Kim (Onyx Classics)

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS – ‘The cello’s first-movement entry [in Walton’s concerto] is lyrical and flowing, with singing double-stopping passages. The instrument’s gutty lower strings bite expressively in the spiky scherzo and the two solo cadenzas of the theme-and-variations finale enter a new and private sound world more akin to the Bloch that follows, so that the full orchestra crash comes as a particularly brutal shock.
Wispelwey performs the remainder of the disc [on a 1698 ‘Magg’ Stradivari]. More muted in its lower registers, the instrument’s sound nevertheless shines brightly in the high tessitura passages, and the Canzona is poignantly haunting, as Wispelwey plays to the slight reverberence in the recording acoustic , letting the sound of each phrase die away.
Ligeti’s solo sonata of 1948/53 is a clear forerunner of Britten’s more celebrated unaccompanied works, with the distinctive timbre of its low double-stops, manic presto and glissando pizzicato chords making it all addictive listening.’

The Strad, July 2009
CD: Walton Cello Concerto, Bloch Suite no.1, Ligeti Sonata, Walton Passacaglia, Britten Ciaconna from Suite no.2 (Onyx Classics)

'Pieter Wispelwey’s recital is a thing of wild beauty. Here is William Walton at his least superficial, in the bold planes of his 1956 Cello Concerto and the bitter “Passacaglia”. […] Wispelwey’s sound is thrilling, his articulation of Ligeti’s “Sonata for solo cello” fierce and intelligent.’

Anna Picard, The Independent on Sunday, 22 March 2009
Walton Cello Concerto, Bloch Suite no.1, Ligeti Sonata, Walton Passacaglia, Britten Ciaconna from Suite no.2 (Onyx Classics ONYX4042)

‘A disc of superb performance of post-1945 cello works by Pieter Wispelwey. I do not know of a finer performance of the Walton concerto, capturing its romance, mellowness and vitality.’

The Sunday Telegraph, 22 March 2009
Walton Cello Concerto, Bloch Suite no.1, Ligeti Sonata, Walton Passacaglia, Britten Ciaconna from Suite no.2 (Onyx Classics)

‘After living on the fringe of the cello concerto repertoire for decades, the two Shostakovich concertos are suddenly everywhere in the recording market. […] The most mature performance is Pieter Wispelwey's reading of Cello Concerto No. 2, which avoids histrionics and primary colors in a performance of great concentration and mastery, but doesn't illuminate the music's enigmas so much as present their full implications.’
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 January 2009
Shostakovich concerto No.2, Britten Suite No.3 (Channel Classics)

DIAPASON D’OR – “This interpretation of the last and most personal of the three Suites Britten composed for Rostropovich takes the dimension of an intimate soliloquy, charged with an unexpected affectivity, parable of a rare richness and complexity, delivered in an illuminated style, and which finds here an exceptional dramatic integrity. […] usually portrayed as pages taken out of an intimate journal, this suite becomes a portrait, almost a freudian analysis when invested as profoundly as Wispelwey does. […] An interpretation [of Shostakovich’s Concerto No.2] of an astonishing precision, offering chamber perspective rather than a symphonic one. […] an innate sense of lyrical continuity […] this new recording finally restores this opus’s full richness and spiritual dimension.”

Diapason (France), December 2008
Shostakovich concerto No.2, Britten Suite No.3 (Channel Classics)

GRAMOPHONE RECOMMENDS – “The fact that each work here is performed with accute sensitivity makes for an unusually rewarding experience. […] Add to this an exceptional sense of creative dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra and you have a performance that richly repays repeated hearings. […] Wispelwey brings a similar blend of colouristic and poetic imagination to bear on Britten’s uncompromising Suite, making it a real journey of exploration […] What we have here is searching musicianship in the service of profound music, and as such it richly deserves a place on any serious collector’s shelf.”

Gramophone (UK), November 2008
Shostakovich concerto No.2, Britten Suite No.3 (Channel Classics)

 

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