Balder Dendievel - Oboe
Ann Geerts
Born into a musical family, BALDER DENDIEVEL (°2002), took his first steps on the violin when he was four years old. At the age of five he switched to the oboe. After studies at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp in the class of Luk Nielandt, Balder was admitted to the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin in October 2019, where he studies with prof. Dominik Wollenweber, solo English horn player with the Berliner Philharmoniker. He also studies historical oboe with Antje Thierbach. He appears as a soloist and orchestral and chamber musician, on both modern and historical oboes.
Balder has been invited by the orchestra of La Monnaie, Belgian National Orchestra, the orchestra of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Flanders Symphony Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Elbipolis Barockorchester Hamburg, Aris & Aulis baroque orchestra, Concerto Brandenburg and others. As a soloist, he has performed concertos by Bach,
Marcello, Vivaldi, Mozart and Richard Strauss with, among others, Nuove Musiche and Frascati Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Balder plays in various combinations, with ensembles such as Terra Nova Collective, I SOLISTI and in his own productions. He recorded for CDs by Vocal Ensemble Reflection, I SOLISTI, Young Belgian Talent and Terra Nova Collective. Recent and new classical music is also close to Balder's heart: he created several works and major 20th century pieces for oboe, such as Luciano Berio's Sequenza VII, are among his repertoire.
Balder was a finalist in the 'Young Belgian Talent' competition and in 2018 he won the first prize at the Honda Competition for Classical Music,' a competition between the Belgian conservatories. The final round was broadcasted live on Musiq3. At the International Anton Rubinstein Chamber Music Competition in Düsseldorf, Balder received the prize for best performance of a work by W.A. Mozart, together with Jappe Dendievel and Anne Fuhrmann as a woodwind trio. He received the "Golden Label Young Talent" from the magazine Klassiek Centraal.
Since September 2020, Balder holds the title of NextGeneration Artist at the I SOLISTI ACADEMY. Within this program, I SOLISTI Belgian wind ensemble Antwerp offers young artists every opportunity to further develop themselves musically and artistically. He gets the possibility to develop his own projects and share the stage with the ensemble. As an artist who likes to look beyond his own discipline, Balder created in June 2022, under the wings of I SOLISTI, the performance Metamorfosen, with (new) music, narrator and live sand art.