Kristian Bezuidenhout, born in South Africa, was educated in Australia and later at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He won the prestigious Fortepiano Competition in Bruges and began his international career as a pianist. Bezuidenhout performs on the fortepiano and harpsichord as well as on the modern grand piano. He has appeared with orchestras such as the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Les Siècles under the direction of conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Bernard Haitink and Giovanni Antonini. More recently, he has also appeared as a musical director, for example with the Freiburger Barockorchester, which appointed him as its Artistic Director in 2017, and with The English Concert, where he served as Principal Guest Conductor. In 2025, he was appointed Associate Artist of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Further concerts in this dual role have taken him to the Camerata Salzburg, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. He is also deeply committed to chamber music, performing with violinists Isabelle Faust, Alina Ibragimova and Rachel Podger, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and singers Carolyn Sampson, Mark Padmore, Matthias Goerne and Anne Sofie von Otter. Kristian Bezuidenhout has released more than 30 albums, including a complete cycle of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s piano sonatas, which was awarded the Diapason d’Or, the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the Prix Caecilia.
