Pieter Nuytten (°1980) took his first bassoon lessons with Koen Coppé at the age of 15 and studied bassoon at the conservatories of Antwerp, Cologne and Basel with Francis Pollet, Danny d’Haene (contrabassoon), Georg Klütsch and Sergio Azzolini.
As a student Pieter was selected for the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra (Japan) and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. Early on he worked with conductors like Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink and Ivan Fischer.
In 2004 he became principal bassoonist in the Orchestra of the Opera de Rouen – Haute Normandie and since 2007 in the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. His subsequent Chief Conductors were Valery Gergiev, Yannick Nézet Séguin and since 2018 Lahav Shani. As a guest principal Pieter appeared with orchestras such as the Radio Philharmonic Hilversum, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the KBS Symphony Orchestra Seoul, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Nelssons) and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam (Harding/Fischer/Van Zweden/Mäkelä). During the 2014-15 season he was also principal in the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Marek Janowski.
He is passionate about chamber music and had the privilege to work with musicians as Nicholas Daniel, Jonathan Kelly, Priya Mitchell, Natacha Kudritskaya, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Vineta Sareika and Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. Pieter participated in Festivals like Classic Con Brio Osnabrück, Storioni Festival Eindhoven, Schiermonnikoog International Chamber Music Festival, Stradun Classic in Dubrovnik and Arbanassi Summer Music (Bulgaria). Pieter is a founding member of the Antwerp based Focus, de Bewoners, the Kölner Kammersolisten, and performs as a regular guest with Oxalys (Brussels) and het Collectief.
In 2001 Pieter made his debut in Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante in Bozar, Brussels. Since then he performed numerous concerti and concertante by Peter Maxwell Davies, Kalevi Aho, Haydn, Vivaldi, Weber, Strauss and Mozart in concert halls in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, China and Croatia with conductors as Roy Goodman, Daniel Kawka, Hubert Buchberger, Ulrich Kern, Nicholas Collon, Ivan Meylemans, Christoph Campestrini, Ben Gernon, Pavle Zajcev, Darrell Ang, Edo de Waart and Osmo Vänskä.
With Flanders Symphony Orchestra Pieter and his wife Marija Pavlovic performed the Duet Concertino by Richard Strauss in the main concerthalls in Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp in 2016 and in the Dubrovnik Summer Festival with the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra. During the 2023-24 season they have performed with Zadar Chamber Orchestra and the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra in Chengdu, China.
There were live radio broadcasts of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with Collegium Instrumentale Brugense in 2008, Weber’s Andante and Rondo Ungarese with the Brussels Philharmonic in 2015, with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in 2021 and the Aho Concerto for two Bassoons with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in 2022.
Pieter teaches at the Conservatoires of Rotterdam and Ghent. He initiated and organised the Ghent Bassoon Festival in 2014 and taught masterclasses in Belgium, the Netherlands, Seoul, Linz, Buenos Aires and Lima.
