Bart van Oort

Bart van Oort (born June 6, 1959) is a Dutch classical pianist.

Van Oort was born in Utrecht. After completing his studies in modern piano in the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 1983, he studied fortepiano there with Stanley Hoogland. In 1986 he won both first prize, jointly with Geoffrey Lancaster, and the special "Audience" prize at the Mozart Fortepiano Competition in Bruges, Belgium.

Since 1997, van Oort has been a prolific recording artist, as well as recitalist, with roughly 40 recordings to date. His recorded repertoire runs from Haydn, whose complete piano trios he has recorded, to the romantic era, with recordings of Chopin, Field and their lesser-known contemporaries. He recently completed an eight-year project recording the complete keyboard works of Mozart, a collection which includes many pieces hitherto unrecorded. The quatremains pieces he did together with Ursula Dütschler.

After completing his modern piano degree at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 1983, Bart van Oort studied fortepiano with Stanley Hoogland, also at the Royal Conservatory. He subsequently studied with Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Historical Performance Practice in 1993.

Van Oort teaches fortepiano and is a lecturer in Historical Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Conservatory of Amsterdam, and at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. He is also the founder of the Van Swieten Society, which performs classical chamber music.

Van Oort has performed in many European countries and appeared at festivals in Utrecht, Florence, Berlin, Antwerp, Bruges, Melbourne, Brisbane, York, Clisson, Montpellier, and Esterhaza. He has also performed in the US and New Zealand, and makes yearly concert and lecturing tours throughout Australia. He was Artist in Residence at the University of Western Australia (DATE) (Perth).

He has given concerts, lectures and masterclasses at the conservatories of Brussels, Paris, Moscow, Helsinki, Oslo, Stavanger, Perugia, Sydney, Adelaide, Wellington, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Juilliard, Bloomington, and Western Ontario, as well as several Dutch conservatories. He has also taught summer courses at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University (Bloomington) and at the University of Western Australia (Perth).

At the bi-annual fortepiano summer workshop which takes place at the castle of Poeke (Belgium), he teaches together with Malcolm Bilson; the next workshop will take place in August 2006.