You can find a current biography on the website of the musician.
Valter Dešpalj is cello professor at the music academies in Zagreb and Liechtenstein. A graduate of the Juilliard School (where he studied cello under Leonard Rose and chamber music with Felix Galimir and the Juilliard Quartet), he also took master classes with Pablo Casals, Pierre Fournier and André Navarra, and pursued postgraduate study with Galina Kozolupova at the Moscow Conservatory.
Valter Dešpalj has performed all over the world including festivals in Gstaad, Lockenhaus, Kuhmo and Dubrovnik as well as in some of the most prestigious concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall in London, Sydney Opera House, Amsterdam′s Concertgebouw, Moscow Conservatory Hall etc. He was soloist with orchestras including Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Dutch Radio Orchestra, Washington National Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony etc. under the baton of eminent conductors like Roberto Benzi, Sergiu Comissiona, James Conlon, Vernon Handley, Gunther Herbig, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Andrzej Markowski, David Zinman and others. Prominent chamber music partners of his were Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Heinrich Schiff, Philippe Entremont, Yuri Bashmet, Tabea Zimmerman, Irena Grafenauer, Dmitry Sitkovetsky or Alexandre Rabinovitch.
Besides his teaching capacities, Valter Dešpalj has also edited cello music with major publishing houses and has been member of panel at some of the world´s most prestigious international competitions including the Tchaikovsky (Moscow), Bach (Leipzig), Lutoslawski (Warsaw) and ARD (Munich) competition.