Wm. Doppmann

Pianist-Composer WILLIAM DOPPMANN is currently the artistic director for the Port Townsend Chamber Music Society. A resident of Port Townsend for the past two years, Mr. Doppmann is no stranger to audiences here. As Artistic Director for Centrum’s Chamber Music Series from its inception in 1975 until 1998, he and his family were in residence at the Fort many summers, and in later years returned to perform on the winter series. He was also featured soloist performing Mozart’s C major piano concerto with the Seattle Symphony when they appeared in the newly inaugurated Balloon Hanger pavilion in 1992.

Mr. Doppmann’s career spans almost six decades and tells a richly diverse story of musical creativity. Countless performances as piano soloist in recital, with orchestra, and in chamber music collaborations have earned him recognition from audiences and critics worldwide as an artist of stature equaled only by a few. Regarded by his colleagues as “A musician’s musician…” (Portland Oregonian), he has the extraordinary ability to draw listeners inside the sounds of a work, enabling them to experience expanded vistas. Every composition becomes a story of spell-binding intensity.

Mr. Doppmann will tell you that his affinities of temperament are more in line with those of earlier eras when a musician did not specialize but had to be able to do everything from the composing and performing of music in many different styles to the improvisation and flexibility required by circumstance. To roam amid four centuries of Western Music from Bach to Stravinsky, from Mozart to Rachmaninoff, or – in these modern times, to John Cage and John Adams – requires an eclectic facility grounded firmly in a very deep place of inner confidence, experience and musical awareness. All this Mr. Doppmann expresses with complete integrity.

“To be able to project the intricacies of form and expressive content, broad scope of musical thought and genius of the composer, is virtually a miracle. This is exactly what Doppmann achieves. He relieves the listener of any technical awareness or personal interpretations, and allows him to sit face to face with a musical monument.” —Irving Lowens, Washington Post

Mr. Doppmann is also a composer, and he plays like one – re-creating whatever music he chooses to play with freshness and originality Tim Page, New York Times”

…one sensed a species of comprehension that can only be ‘bred in the bone.’.” The New York Herald Tribune

To be able to project the intricacies of form and expressive content, broad scope of musical thought and genius of composer, is virtually a miracle. This is exactly what Doppmann achieves. He relieves the listener of any technical awareness or personal interpretations, and allows him to sit face to face with a musical monument. —Irving Lowens, Washington Post

“We very seldom hear a pianist like Doppmann in Europe. He has an inborn ability to hear the inner voices of music, the natural stream of music and its momentary impulses and nuances. His sensitivity is combined with a great sense of rhythm, his accuracy with a feeling of freedom. He is a masterful musician. Hannu-Ilari Lampila, Helsinki Sanomat

“It was easy to see why so many of these players would take reduced fees and five days: they love playing chamber music with Doppmann. The piece (Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata) was transformed by Doppmann’s ability to explore the inner voices, frame the overripe lyricism with tensile strength, and discover all the muscle in the work without ever muscling the piano. A Mozart violin sonata that opened the afternoon, K304 was a fresh-as-dawn experience as Doppmann poked around in the garden of delights.” —Seattle Weekly

“. . . an evening of brilliant music-making. Doppmann’s brand of artistry transcends the traditional critical rhetoric. To mention a stupendous technique, command of the keyboard, or other like cliches would be to banalize an artistic experience memorable for its elevation and purity.” —A. Fisher, Acadia University News