Peter Waters
- { Biography }
-
Born in Broken Hill, N.S.W. Australia, he completed his piano studies in Adelaide, Sth. Australia, with Roland May and Clemens Laske, and in London with Peter Walfish. Various prizes during his student years included the Chamber Music Prize and two Solo Performance Prizes from the Royal College of Music as well as the Australian Musical Association Prize. His career then took him to the European Continent, where he was soon to play at the Salzburg Festival with the soprano Gundula Janowitz a much celebrated performance of Hindemith's "Das Marienleben". This led to both solo and duo recitals in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, Lyon, Rome, Stockholm, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Zürich and countless music festivals. He was chosen to perform in the 1985 Bach Festival Schaffhausen for the composer's tricentennial as soloist with the Philharmonia Hungarice, just one of the many orchestras the he is regularly invited to play with. Peter Waters was the first pianist to perform a full-length classical recital at a major Rock-Festival in Europe - his performance of Bach and Mozart for an audience of 30'000 people at the Open Air in St. Gallen 1987 was a great success with critics and public alike and was broadcast live for Swiss Radio DRS. Now a resident in Switzerland, he was awarded the St. Gallen Cultural Prize on the basis of his compositions for the New Jazz Ensemble "Bells of Kyoto".