Joep Beving’s lifelong love for the piano assumed a new dimension in 2014, when playing became a way for him to combat his work-related stress. This set off a miraculous chain of events. The Dutch musician began by improvising what he describes as “simple music for complex emotions” and channelled his feelings into a series of exquisite piano pieces. Satisfied with the results, he decided to self-release an album for distribution among family and friends. Solipsism escaped its creator’s immediate orbit, however, after he posted it on an online music service in 2015.
Beving’s musical meditations on the elusive nature of reality, streamed 85 million times within one year, turned him into a true phenomenon of the classical piano world. Since then, Solipsism’s “Sleeping Lotus” has drawn over 75 million plays on Spotify alone. In 2023, the artist celebrated the landmark achievement of surpassing one billion streams across his UMG catalogue. In short, he now ranks as one of the world’s most frequently heard pianists.
Chance played a part in his arrival at Deutsche Grammophon. Unaware of Beving’s viral success online, Christian Badzura, DG’s Vice President A&R New Repertoire, happened to hear Solipsism during a visit to his favourite Berlin bar, where one of its rare vinyl pressings had found a home. Badzura traced the pianist to Amsterdam and signed him. The relationship was sealed with the release of Beving’s DG debut album Prehension in April 2017 and the Yellow Label reissue of Solipsism five months later. Released in October 2018, Conatus contains reworks of tracks from both albums by artists Beving admires, including Eefje de Visser, Andrea Belfi, Thomas Bloch, Tom Trago and Cello Octet Amsterdam.
Beving then created Henosis, a final chapter in the trilogy of albums that had begun with Solipsism. The recording, released in April 2019 and honoured with an Edison Award seven months later, underlined its composer’s feeling for the interdependence of all living beings and the seemingly infinite “oneness” that connects everything within the universe. “This is my journey, and my search for understanding,” he observes. His journey continued with the issue of an extended version of Henosis in February 2020 and a new EP, Joep Beving – The London Session, the following August. Set down at London’s Tileyard Studios, the EP included a haunting vocal version of “An Amalgamation Waltz 1839” from Prehension, recorded with soprano Grace Davidson and the Sonderling Quartet.
Beving’s recent projects include Hermetism (April 2022), an album inspired by ancient philosophical beliefs in the laws that govern the orderly operation of the universe, and Post, a new work for strings, piano, percussion, ney flute and Bulgarian women’s folk choir. The latter, released as an EP in April 2023, explores themes of alienation and reconciliation, fragmentation and healing, depression and recovery. Its music directly inspired and became the soundtrack to an eponymous short film by writer-director Hugo Keijzer.
Joep (pronounced “Yoop”) Beving was born in 1976 in the small Dutch city of Doetinchem. He began making music at an early age and formed his first band at the age of 14. After a repetitive strain injury ended his piano studies at conservatoire level, he changed course to take a degree in public policy and administration. Beving embarked on a career in advertising, taking on a role that involved sourcing and writing music for commercials. Solipsism grew from the moment he played one of his pieces on a hotel’s grand piano in Cannes and realised that his audience was moved to tears. That experience inspired him to work long into the night in the kitchen of his Amsterdam apartment, creating new compositions and recording them in single takes. His essentially minimalist style, often tinged with heartfelt romantic expression, has remained central to everything he has composed since.