Career
Peter Ritzen studied piano and chamber music at the Royal Conservatory of his native city Ghent. He continued his training at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, with the Russian pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva. He graduated with the Diplome Supérieure d'Exécution for piano from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris 'Alfred Cortot'. His teacher there was the Polish piano pedagogue Marian Ribicky.
As a concert pianist, Ritzen has concertized throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S. He cooperated as a soloist with many well known orchestras and ensembles. He is an acclaimed interpreter of Franz Liszt & Theodor Leschetizky. His contact with the Chinese culture resulted in a whole repertoire of own China related compositions. As a result of free classical improvising in concerts on the piano, he transcribed numerous Chinese folk songs, award winning movie themes and Viennese waltzes. Ritzen is a composer of massive works with many performers (+400). His transcendental symphony 'Heavenly Peace', world premiered in 2005 is a typical work in this magnitude. Peter Ritzen is a performing artist for Naxos Records.
Ritzen is also the founder of the International Theodor Leschetizky Summer Academy at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna) in 1991. In 2000 he was invited to be the artistic director of the International Piano Competition 'Theodor Leschetizky' in Taipei (Taiwan R.O.C.). In 2007 and 2010 he was invited by the Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep to feature as panel member for the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition.
Between 2009-2011, Peter Ritzen was invited by the Chinese Ministry of Culture to perform large scale piano concerts all over China. Ritzen is an intimate friend of the renowned pianist-composer Jörg Demus, with whom he performs in piano duo, occasionally.
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