Biography (read more)
Jozef De Beenhouwer was born on 26 March 1948 in Brasschaat, Belgium. He began piano lessons at five with his grandfather, and formed early on the preference for Robert Schumann that would shape the rest of his working life. His formal education ran on two tracks: he qualified as a pharmacist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1970, then studied music at the Queen Elisabeth College of Music in Waterloo, graduating in 1974, and at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, where he took the highest degree summa cum laude in 1975. Between 1991 and 1998 he studied privately with David Kimball in Florence.
He has performed as soloist and chamber musician across Europe and in South Korea and the United States, accompanying singers and working with ensembles including the Panocha Quartet. He formed the Robert Schumann Trio, and from 1986 to 1996 served as official accompanist to the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition. In 1983 he succeeded Lode Backx as professor of piano at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp, a post he held until reaching mandatory retirement in 2013, and from 1990 to 2015 he directed the Brussels Lunchtime Concerts.
De Beenhouwer’s importance lies in the Schumann household rather than in Robert Schumann alone. He reconstructed Schumann’s unfinished D minor Concertsatz, premiered in Vienna in 1986, and completed Clara Schumann’s F minor Konzertsatz — editorial work of a kind that changes what other pianists are able to programme.
He was also the first pianist to record the whole of Clara Schumann’s solo piano music, a project that moved her from a footnote in her husband’s biography to a composer with an audible catalogue of her own. That recording, together with his advocacy in concert, has been a significant part of the wider reassessment of her work.
His standing has been recognised with two Caecilia Prizes, the Robert Schumann Prize awarded by Zwickau in 1993, and the Klara Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Three decades of teaching in Antwerp and a decade as accompanist to the Queen Elisabeth Competition extended his influence to a generation of Belgian musicians.
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