Biography (read more)
Rudolf Jansen was born in Arnhem on 19 January 1940, son of the organist Simon C. Jansen, and studied at Amsterdam’s Sweelinck Conservatory — organ with his father, piano with Nelly Wagenaar, harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt. He became one of the world’s sought-after Lied accompanists, taught at the Sweelinck Conservatory and in Nuremberg, and died on 12 February 2024.
Jansen was the accompanist’s accompanist: Ameling, Bonney, Schreier and Fischer-Dieskau all chose him, and his recorded songbook runs across the whole Lied literature. His rows in this catalogue put the same discreet mastery under many voices — the art that is hardest to hear precisely because it never asks to be heard.
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