Leo van Doeselaar is a Dutch musician, organist, pianist, fortepianist and organ teacher, born in Goes in 1954. His repertoire as an organist, pianist and fortepianist spans several centuries. He has built an extensive concert career in the Netherlands and abroad, performs chamber music and works as a song accompanist. For twenty years, he has formed a piano duo with Wyneke Jordans.
Van Doeselaar began studying organ and piano with Gerard Akkerhuis in The Hague. He continued at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, studying organ with Albert de Klerk and piano with Jan Wijn. He completed soloist diplomas in both instruments and received the Prix d'Excellence for organ. After his studies, he pursued historical-performance-practice masterclasses abroad, studied the French organ repertoire with André Isoir in Paris, and took fortepiano lessons with Malcolm Bilson and Jos Van Immerseel.
As a soloist, he has performed with conductors Ernest Bour, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Chailly, Ingo Metzmacher, Hartmut Haenchen, Jean Fournet, Frans Brüggen and David Zinman. As a continuo player, he has worked with Jos van Veldhoven, Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Jos Van Immerseel, Gustav Leonhardt, Paul McCreesh and Andrew Parrott. He has given world premieres of organ works and works for organ and orchestra by Tristan Keuris, Sofia Gubaidulina, Peter-Jan Wagemans and Wolfgang Rihm.
In 1993, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly, he performed Tristan Keuris's Organ Concerto for the inauguration of the restored organ at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw. In Lucerne in 2003, he gave the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Organ Concerto, Unbekannt IV. As titular organist of the Royal Concertgebouw, he has collaborated with orchestras, ensembles and soloists in repertoire ranging from Haydn to Donatoni. He was Professor of Artistic Organ Performance at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Van Doeselaar is titular organist of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the 1643 Van Hagerbeer organ at St Peter's Church in Leiden, and, from 1 January 2014, St Martin's Church in Groningen. He works as a soloist and teacher throughout Europe and the United States, including at early-music festivals in Flanders, Bruges, Utrecht, York, Saintes, Berlin, San Antonio and Moscow. He regularly performs with ensembles of the Dutch Bach Society and appeared as an organ teacher to Chinese music students at St Bavo Church in Haarlem on the television programme Podium on Tour in 2016.
With Jordans, Van Doeselaar has recorded piano-duo music by Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák, Ravel, Stravinsky and Satie for various labels. Their radio and television work includes seven BBC recordings and concerts on historical and modern grand pianos, later issued in a compilation. As an organist, continuo player and pianist, he has also recorded for several record companies, including the first complete recordings of the organ works of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and George Frideric Handel. His recording of Heinrich Scheidemann's organ music on the Van Hagerbeer organ received the German Record Critics' Award in the keyboard-instruments category.
His discography also includes recordings on historic organs of music by Mozart, Johann Ludwig Krebs, Johann Sebastian Bach, Anthoni van Noordt, César Franck, Franz Liszt and Max Reger. A complete recording of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's keyboard works, to which he contributed on the Van Hagerbeer organ, received an Edison and the German Record Critics' Award in 2003. A Decca recording of Paul Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 7, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Chailly, received a Grammy Award. He is one of the organists recording for the Dutch Bach Society's All of Bach project.
His distinctions include the Prix d'Excellence for Organ in 1979, the Toonkunst Jubilee Prize in 1980, the Concertgebouw's Silver Friends' Wreath in 1981, a silver medal from the Academic Society of Arts, Sciences and Letters in Paris in 2006, and the Sweelinck Prize in 2007 for his services to Dutch organ culture.