Dr. Daniel Rieppel

Piano

Pianist Daniel Rieppel, a Minnesota native of Austro-Hungarian and Norwegian descent, holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University, and earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Minnesota under Lydia Artymiw. His principal teachers include Jack Radunsky and Leonard Hokanson, as well as John Perry at the Aspen Music Festival. Before relocating to the Twin Cities, he studied in Munich, Germany as a DAAD scholar (Deutscher Akademischer Austaushdienst), with the eminent German pianist Gerhard Oppitz.

Daniel Rieppel made his solo piano recital debut at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, a performance which was subsequently broadcast in its entirety by Minnesota Public Radio. He has worked as a chamber musician with members of the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and is a founding member of The Schubert Trio. In the Midwest he has appeared as soloist with numerous ensembles, including the South Dakota Symphony, the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (Minneapolis), the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (Minneapolis), and The Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra (Duluth).

He has performed widely in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, including the Palais Corbelli in Vienna and in duo recital with the Austrian violinist Risa Schuchter, during the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in Salzburg. He has performed for the U.S. Ambassador to Panama on several occasions, and is a frequent collaborator of the “Alfredo de Saint Malo” International Music Festival; he returned in May 2015 to open the festival with violinist Frank Almond, Concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony, who performed on the 1715 Lipinski Stradivarius, recently featured in the November 2014 issue of Vanity Fair.

In February of 2019, the piano/percussion quartet “Sticks and Hammers” made it’s official debut at the New World Center in Miami Beach, Florida; Dr. Rieppel is a founding member of this ensemble along with his son Erich Rieppel, newly-installed Principal Timpanist of the Minnesota Orchestra, and long-time piano partner Dr. David Viscoli, as well as Carlos Camacho and Pedro Fernandez, Panamanian percussionists of national and international reputation. He performed in the New York City premiere of “Algebra of Night” by Eugene O’brien on March 1, 2020 at the National Opera Center.

A recognized Schubert scholar, Dr. Rieppel has lectured and performed Schubert’s works in New York City, Vienna, and at Oxford University. He has published articles on Schubert’s early piano sonatas for several academic journals, including the journal “Durch die Brille,” of the Internationales Franz Schubert Institut. His work on Schubert was recognized with several travel grants from the Center for Austrian Studies (U of M) and a Fulbright Scholar Research award to Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Rieppel has served as Professor of Music at Southwest Minnesota State University since 1998. He served on the artist faculty for the Young Artist World Piano Festival in Minneapolis for 15 consecutive years. He appears on a new album of the Lieder of Julius Burger with his former student and protégé Ryan Hugh Ross on the Spaetlese Musik label, along with Nicola Rose and Sian Cameron. His new solo CD was released on April 30, 2022.