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, and includes works by many of the most well-known composers of the 20th century. He has enjoyed very close collaborations with contemporary composers, resulting in his presentation of numerous premieres. He has performed in a wide range of venues, from small clubs in the underground experimental music scene to well-established venues like the Prague Spring festival (Elliott Carter’s Dialogues), Lincoln Centre in New York, and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. 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. He is one of the only pianists in the world who play the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum by Keikhosru Sorabji and the extremely complex Çoğluotobüsişletmesi by Clarence Barlow. Since 2001 he has taught piano at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent. In 2013 he played Ligeti’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Prague Spring festival. In March 2015 he was the solo pianist in the world premiere of the Frederic Rzewski’s Piano Concerto with ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble and Peter Rundel. He is a long-time soloist at Ostrava Days and he has performed major works of 20th and 21st century within the festival – in this regard, his performance of Rzewski’s masterpiece The People United Will Never Be Defeated was an unforgettable experience. In november 2023 he played Rzewski’s compositions at a concert Essential Rzewski & Friends, organized by the Ostrava Center for New Music.
