ELS BIESEMANS
BIOGRAPHY
«A born narrator. Els Biesemans plays in perfect symbiosis with the composer, with much feeling and strong emotion. She is a true pianist and narrator, phrases and sings. She is a virtuoso, but only becauses it serves the music in a better way. A highly interesting, but above all aesthetic experience.»
Lucas Huybrechts, cobra.be
«Els Biesemans' rendition on the period instrument is eye-opening. She plays modern pianos too, and is an organist as well. But it feels as if she’d been born to play this 180-year-old instrument.»
Jon Sobel, Blogcritics
«The artist achieved a superb balance between rigour and freedom of interpretation. A lively, breathing performance.»
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
She is a pianist, an organist, a chamber musician, and the initiator and director of Zurich’s “Flügelschläge” fortepiano festival. Els Biesemans is known for performance repertoires that are both sophisticated and unconventional. With a nuanced recital marked by freshness and elegance, this virtuoso explores the full tonal range of 200-year-old fortepianos as well as organs, harpsichords, and modern grand pianos.
Els Biesemans is celebrated as a brilliant interpreter of famous composers, but also as a discoverer of forgotten musical treasures. From Schumann to Beethoven, from Bach to Chopin, her mission is to make the music of a bygone age heard “as if through a time machine.”
Her musical portfolio is a multifaceted one. After studying piano, organ, and chamber music at the Lemmens Institute at Leuven, Els Biesemans specialized in the rich keyboard heritage of the 18th and 19th centuries at the Schola Canticorum Basiliensis. Commanding a repertoire ranging from the medieval to the modern ages, Els Biesemans has won numerous international awards for her performances. Born in Antwerp in 1978, the artist has won international competitions in Vilnius, Bremen, Brugues, Paris, Prague, Tokyo, and Montreal.
Today, her successful career takes her all over Europe, Japan, Canada, and the US.
Among her artistic partners are Giuliano Carmignola, Peter Wispelwey, Avi Avital, Julian Prégardien, Marie-Claude Chappuis, the orchestras La Cetra, La Scintilla, Hofkapelle München, Capriccio Basel and many more.
Guest performances included the Philharmonie Berlin, Essen, Haarlem, Zurich’s Tonhalle, the Salle Philharmonique de Liège, the BOZAR and AMUZ venues in Brussels and Antwerp, the Palacio Euskalduna of Bilbao, the Philharmonics of Ekaterinburg and Omsk, and the Maison de Radio France in Paris. She has performed at the Bremen Music Festival, the Montreal Bach Festival, the Würzburg Mozart Festival, the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Festival des Forêts at Compiègne, Musikfestspiele Sanssouci Potsdam.
She lives with her collection of historical instruments in Zurich, Switzerland.