Pieter Wispelwey (NL)
From Haarlem
Popularity
Pieter Wispelwey has one upcoming show in the Netherlands: on May 13, 2027 at De Oosterpoort, Groningen.
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About
Also known as: Peter Wispelway, Peter Wispelwey
Pieter Wispelwey has a reputation for doing things his own way, and it shows. The Dutch cellist from Haarlem made his recording debut in 1990 with Bach's Cello Suites on Channel Classics Records, a set that drew serious attention and which he went on to record twice more, in 1998 and again in 2012. That kind of commitment to revisiting a piece over decades says a lot about his approach. Channel Classics gave him the creative freedom to go wherever he wanted, which led to some genuinely unusual territory: Schubert violin sonatinas on cello, Chopin waltzes and mazurkas, Bach Gamba sonatas reworked with his own instrumentations. In 1992 he became the first cellist to win the Netherlands Music Prize. What sets Wispelwey apart is his ease across very different worlds. He plays both modern and baroque cello, switching between metal and gut strings depending on what the music actually needs rather than what any doctrine demands. That flexibility has taken him to the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, the Sydney Opera House and the Teatro Colón, and into collaborations with orchestras from the Rotterdam Philharmonic to the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Ivan Hewett of the Telegraph called him a master rhetorician, which feels about right for someone whose playing is built on long, arching musical lines.
