Biography |
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| « He makes you listen to music as if you are discovering it Eureka!-style: yes, that’s what the composer must have meant.» (Financial Times). Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with the Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras, Budapest Festival Orchestra, NHK, Seoul Philharmonic, Taiwan Philharmonic and collaborates with many renowned conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Neeme Järvi, Daniele Gatti, François-Xavier Roth, Ivan Fischer, Vasily Petrenko, Domingo Hindoyan, Pablo Heras Casado, Michele Spotti, Marko Letonja, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, Nicholas Collon, Louis Langrée, Kazuko Yamada, Pierre Bleuse, Pietari Inkinen, Sir Andrew Davis, Lawrence Foster, Leonard Slatkin, amongst others. Engagements during the 2023/24 season include a Chinese tour with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Lan Shui, Les Siècles with Renaud Capuçon under the direction of Francois Xavier-Roth, performing both Ravel concerto with the Lähti Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska, the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, as well as Kyoto Symphony Orchestra under Junichi Hirokami with Bartok’s fiendish second piano concerto. He also appears with the Manchester Camerata at the Enescu Festival in Romania with Gábor Takacs-Nagy and with the Karol Szymanowski Filharmonia in Kraków, under the baton of Antoni Wit. In recital, Bavouzet continues his three-year residency at the Wigmore Hall, titled ‘Autour de Debussy’, which includes solo recitals and chamber appearances with Steven Isserlis, Quatuor Danel and the Orsino Ensemble among others. His solo recital at Wigmore Hall in February shall consist of a unique pairing of Debussy, Liszt and Massenet, a programme which he shall also be taking to Sage Gateshead, SJE Oxford and Hamamatsu in Japan. Other recitals include a Rachmaninov-centred two-piano performance with the Chamber Music Society at New York’s Lincoln Centre. Bavouzet’s previous notable performances include Carnegie Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Hall with Orchestre National de France, the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and a BBC Proms appearance with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon. He has recently appeared with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, play-directed a three concerto programme with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and toured the Baltics with the Manchester Camerata. Bavouzet is also a frequent guest at the Verbier festival, having been invited not only to perform but to share his valuable insights and thoughts on music, in particular on Beethoven. In summer 2023, Bavouzet returned to perform at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Bravo! Vail Festival and the Aspen Festival, finishing the tour at Finland’s Mänttä Music Festival. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos. One of the most recent releases, A Musical Tribute to Pierre Sancan with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier, won the Gramophone Editor’s Choice and Diapason d’Or awards. His complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series has been named « the modern benchmark » by Gramophone and « The Beethoven Connection » received numerous accolades from magazines including the New York Times, BBC Music Magazine and Classica. The recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Ongoing cycles include the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, the fourth volume of which was nominated for Gramophone Award in 2020. In September of the same year, the complete Beethoven Concertos were released with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra play-directed by Bavouzet. Other recordings include Bartók’s Piano Concerti and the complete Prokofiev Piano Concerti with the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda – the latter won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Under Yan-Pascal Tortelier, he recorded Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Ravel Piano concerti with the BBC Symphony Orchestra which won both a Gramophone and BBC magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have also garnered Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’Année awards. Bavouzet has worked closely with Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltan Kocsis, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Bruno Mantovani and Jörg Widmann and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music and an Advisory Board member of the Pianofest in the Hamptons. In 2012 he was ICMA Artist of the Year and in 2008 he was awarded Beijing’s first ever Elite Prize for his Beethoven complete sonata series. |
   
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