Valter Dešpalj

Valter Dešpalj (* 1947 in Zadar) is a Croatian cellist. He is a professor at the Music Academy of Zagreb. He studied at the Juilliard School with Leonard Rose, Felix Galimir and the Juilliard Quartet, and later with Galina Kosolupowa the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. Master classes with P. Casals, P. Fournier and A. Navarra rounded off his education.

Dešpalj concerted around the world, including festivals in Gstaad, curls house, Kuhmo and Dubrovnik, including in such major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Royal Festival Hall ( London), the Sydney Opera House or the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. As a soloist he played with the Deutsches Symphonie -Orchester Berlin, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Orchestra, the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, among others, with such famous conductors such as Roberto Benzi Sergiu Comissiona, James Conlon, Vernon Handley, Gunther Herbig, Hiroyuki Iwaki, David Zinman and Andrzej Markowski. His chamber music partners include Gidon Kremer, Yo -Yo Ma, Heinrich Schiff, Philippe Entremont, Yuri Bashmet, Tabea Zimmermann, Irena Count Auer, Dmitry Sitkovetsky and Alexandre Rabinovitch.

In addition to teaching in Zagreb, he teaches as a visiting professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and Amsterdam Conservatory. Despalj is also editor of cello literature and juror in the most famous music competitions such as the Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow), the Bach Competition (Leipzig ) and the ARD Competition ( Munich).

• Classical cellist
• Croatian musicians
• University teachers (Zagreb)
• Born in 1947
• Man