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The Australian-born Dutch harpsichordist, organist and musicologist, Pieter Dirksen, completed his musicological studies with honours in 1987 and since then published widely about baroque keyboard music. In 1996 he received his doctorate ‘cum laude’ with a dissertation on the keyboard music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, which was awarded the Dutch Praemium Erasmianum.
Pieter Dirksen performs as soloist on both harpsichord and organ and as continuo player with diverse chamber ensembles. He is a member of Combattimento Consort Amsterdam and the Nederlandse Bachvereniging as well as the chamber music group La Suave Melodia. He appeared in most European countries, the USA and Canada, and regularly. As a soloist he specializes in the rich 17th-century North-European repertoire as well as in the music of J.S. Bach.
Pieter Dirksen teached at the Organ Summer Academies in Haarlem, Göteborg and Smarano and is affiliated with the organ research at the Göteborg Organ Art Center. He also gives master-classes in chamber music and keyboard playing.
Among his numerous recordings the one devoted to the reconstruction of the earliest version of J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue (BWV 1080) and the complete recording of J.P. Sweelinck's keyboard music, in which he participated both as a player and musicologist, stand out in particular. The latter was awarded the highest Dutch prize, the Edison. Apart from the doctorate dissertation on J.P. Sweelinck, his other books have been devoted to J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue, J.P. Sweelinck (essays, 2002) and Johann Heinrich Scheidemann, and critical editions appeared with music by Bull, J.P. Sweelinck, Cornet, J.H. Scheidemann, Andreas Düben, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Adam Reincken, Vincent Lübeck and J.S. Bach. He currently lives in Culemborg, the Netherlands. |
