About Daan Vandewalle

The pianist Daan Vandewalle is an internationally acclaimed performer of 20th- and 21st-century piano music.

His repertoire consists of hundreds of pieces, the complete works of most of the well-known composers of the 20th century such as Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, as well as numerous premieres that resulted from intense collaborations with composers of today. He has performed piano concertos by Ligeti, Elliot Carter and Ustvolskaya with orchestras and ensembles such as the Ensemble Contrechamps, the Janacek Philharmonic, the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Ostravská banda, the City of Madrid Orchestra in venues such as the Prague Spring Festival, the Lincoln Center and the New York Carnegie Hall. Solo and duo performances took place at venues such as the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid and the Salzburg Mozarteum.

Special projects include his life-long collaboration with the American composer Alvin Curran which resulted in a series of 6-hour marathon performances of the piano cycle Inner Cities, a series that was released on a Long Distance classics/Harmonia Mundi CD box (2005). Other recording projects included the complete piano music of Gordon Mumma (2008 NWR) and his debut recording of Ives' Concord Sonata (1996) which was met with rave reviews in the American press. He premiered dozens of new pieces, e.g. Frederic Rzewski’s piano concerto 'A Dog’s Life' with the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, conducted by Peter Rundel, Rzewski's hour-long solo work 'Songs of Insurrection' and solo piano pieces by Clarence Barlow, Maria De Alvear, Fred Frith and Gordon Mumma. He is one of the few pianists in the world who play the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum by Sorabji and the extremely complex Cogluotobusisletmesi by Clarence Barlow. Recent projects include Berg's Kammerkonzert, conducted by Roland Kluttig, performances at the Zagreb Music Biennial, live radio performances in Holland of Rzewski’s 'The Road', a piece which he premiered in 1996, and collaborations with the composers Marc Sabat and Alexander Moosbrugger.

Apart from his work as a soloist he forms a piano-duo with the legendary Australian pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, and duos with cellist Arne Deforce and singer Salome Kammer.

Since 2001 he has taught piano at the Conservatoire of Ghent, School of Arts.

www.daanvandewalle.com