Jozef De Beenhouwer

He managed to reconstruct and complete an unfinished Concertsatz in D minor dated 1839, drawing on Robert Schumann's autograph, whose pages, besides being hard to read, had also been wrongly bound.

Jozef De Beenhouwer (born 26 March 1948 in Brasschaat, Belgium) is a Belgian pianist, music teacher and musicologist.

His first teacher, with whom he started at the age of five, was his paternal grandfather.

Even as a child and adolescent, he became acquainted with a vast repertoire, and developed a special preference for music by Robert Schumann.

In 1964 he began studying with Lode Backx, at first privately; later, after graduating from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as a pharmacist (1970), at the Queen Elisabeth College of Music at Waterloo, from which he graduated in 1974, and at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, which granted him the “Hoger Diploma”, its highest degree, summa cum laude in 1975.

Jozef De Beenhouwer succeeded his teacher Lode Backx as a professor of piano at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp in 1983.

For ten years (1986–1996) Jozef De Beenhouwer was an official accompanist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition for violin and singing.

He is a regular guest of the Brahms Festival at Mürzzuschlag, Austria.

Jozef De Beenhouwer's recordings include works by Johannes Brahms, Hans Pfitzner, Franz Schubert, and by the German romantic composer Ludwig Schuncke, whose G minor sonata he was the first to perform.

His international reputation rests mainly on his Schumann expertise.

The world premiere took place in Vienna, 1986, with the Vienna Symphony conducted by Peter Gülke.

He completed and orchestrated a Konzertsatz in F minor by Clara Schumann (world premiere in Zwickau, 1986, with the orchestra of the Theater of Zwickau conducted by Albrecht Hofmann).

He was the first to record all of Clara Schumann's works for piano solo (three CDs with the label cpo).

He serves regularly as a member of the jury of the International Robert Schumann Competition for Piano, and occasionally for other international piano competitions.

Jozef De Beenhouwer is also an ardent champion of music by Belgian, especially Flemish, composers, whose works he plays and records regularly.

When these have remained unpublished he deciphers them from the manuscript and sometimes ends up publishing them himself; see the bibliography and discography below.)

On tour in the US, Jozef De Beenhouwer has played a number of concerts as a soloist and with the violinist Janet Packer, and their programs have all featured American composers, such as Irving Fine, Amy Beach, Gardner Read, Andrew Imbrie and Vittorio Rieti.

From 1990 until 2015 he was the artistic director of the Brussels Lunchtime Concerts.

Jozef De Beenhouwer is also interested in literature and in painting.

His knowledge of literature, particularly of German Romanticism, stands him in good stead in his Schumann studies and in his Art Song class.

And he has published the standard monograph on the Belgian-Dutch painter Henry Luyten as well as a book on that painter's school.

Another major influence on Jozef De Beenhouwer was David Kimball, with whom he took private lessons in Florence between 1991 and 1998.

As a soloist, both in works for piano solo and in works with orchestra, he has played concerts and made radio and television recordings in many European countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and the Czech Republic,) in South-Korea and in the United States.

He has accompanied singers such as Ria Bollen, Nina Stemme, Robert Holl, and Werner Van Mechelen.

As a chamber musician, he has played with Belgian musicians including the clarinetist Walter Boeykens, the pianist Daniel Blumenthal, the violinist Guido Deneve, the violist Leo Deneve, the cellist Edmond Baeyens, the Spiegel Quartet, as well as with international partners such as the violinists Ning Kam and Alexander Kramarov, the violist Hartmut Lindemann, the cellist Marien van Staalen, and the Panocha Quartet.

With Kees Hülsmann and Marien van Staalen he forms the Robert Schumann Trio.

he was also in charge of a chamber music course at the conservatory until 2013, when he reached the mandatory retirement age.

Until 2020, he continued as a guest professor, teaching, together with the mezzo-soprano Lucienne Van Deyck, the course of Art Songs, term of which was devoted to German Lieder.