Jos van Immerseel

Pianist, conductor, researcher, collector, professor: the work of Jos van Immerseel is his life and that life is music. His primary teachers were Flor Peeters, organ and composition; Eugeen Traey, piano; Jef Alpaerts, chamber music; Lucie Frateur, voice; Kenneth Gilbert, harpsichord; and Daniël Sternefeld, conducting. He is also self-taught in organology, rhetoric, fortepiano and clavichord.

In 1987 he founded Anima Eterna Brugge, a symphony orchestra that aims to use the instruments that were actually familiar to the composers and that inspired them. Anima has been in residence at the Bruges Concertgebouw since 2003 where it, next to performing concerts, also participates in educational activities and recording albums.

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Van Immerseel taught for years at the Conservatories of Antwerp, Amsterdam and Paris and has been invited as guest teacher by the Scola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel), Indiana University (Bloomington) and Kunitachi College (Tokyo).

He has been a guest conductor with many orchestras including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Wiener Akademie, the orchestra of the Mozarteum, Beethoven-Orchester Bonn. During his life he has built up a unique collection of historic keyboard instruments which have found and still find frequent use with his diverse recordings and concert performances.

His work can be heard on over 120 CD recordings from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, Channel Classics and the prestigious Outhere label Alpha. His latest solo piano release was “Piano works of the young Beethoven” (2020). Prestigious magazines such as the Spiegel or Fono Forum gave their tribute to the recording: “The Belgian takes a back seat and focuses primarily on the effect of the fortepiano rather than on technical show effects. It is precisely this that brings out the ‘real’ Beethoven” (Der Spiegel, 12.8.2020).

In 2010 he received the Musikfestpreis from the city of Bremen, the Klara Career Prize followed in 2018. Recently, the Vice-president of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister of Culture, Sven Gatz awarded him the highest distinction for a life in service of classical music in Flanders.

Currently van Immerseel is working together with Anima Eterna Brugge’s team, musicians and the board of directors, to ensure a solid future for this internationally based organization.

For further information: www.animaeterna.be

As of: Season 2020/2021
Please use this by Weigold & Böhm authorized biograpy only.

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