David Wilde

Who is David Wilde?

David Wilde is an English pianist and composer. As a boy he studied with Solomon and his pupil Franz Reizenstein, who had also studied composition with Hindemith and Vaughan Williams.

A frequent soloist at the Henry Wood Proms, working with such conductors as Horenstein, Boulez, and Downes, he shared with Jacqueline du Pré the honour of opening the BBC's second TV Channel in the North of England with Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra in 1962, and was a soloist at the Royal Concert the same year.

During the 1990s he composed many works protesting against human rights abuses in our time and was twice honoured by the city of Sarajevo. "The Cellist of Sarajevo", dedicated to Vedran Smailovic, was recorded by Yo-Yo Ma for Sony Classical, and the opera "London Under Siege”, after an idea by Bosnian poet Goran Simic, was produced by the State Theatre of Lower Saxony in 1998.

As a pianist Wilde has won several major prizes, including a first at the Liszt-Bartók competition in Budapest in 1961. The legendary Nadia Boulanger was a jury member and invited him to Paris for further study.