Nicholas Angelich

Gifted with a fabulous technique, the pianist Nicholas Angelich has now achieved an overwhelming purity of sound that indisputably sets him among today’s finest artists. By the age of twelve he had already sight-read a vast repertoire, and his exceptional talents prompted him to pursue his explorations with eminent masters of his instrument: he entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where he won Premiers Prix in piano, chamber music and accompaniment. During the years that followed he was able successfully to test this training in the rigorous atmosphere of the international competition circuit. Just recently, he added a further distinction to his collection with the Young Talent prize of the Ruhr Klavierfestival, under the patronage of Leon Fleisher. It is no surprise that the foremost concert halls both in France and abroad regularly open their doors to him.
Nicholas Angelich is especially inspired by the music of the twentieth century, and has worked alongside and under the direction of Messiaen, Boulez and Stockhausen, as well as performing the music of Éric Tanguy and giving the premiere of Pierre Henry’s Concerto sans orchestre pour piano. He has also participated in the recent cycles of Beethoven’s piano sonatas given in different countries, and has several times played Liszt’s complete Années de Pèlerinage in the course of a single evening. After making his debut with the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur in 2003, he continued his collaboration with this conductor and the Orchestre National de France with performances of the Piano Concerto no.2 of Brahms in Japan in April 2004. His recordings – Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux and Brahms’s two Viola Sonatas opus 120 in the ‘Nouveaux Interprètes’ series on Harmonia Mundi, a Ravel recital (Lyrinx), a complete Années de Pèlerinage (Mirare) which among other awards won a ‘Choc’ of the Year from Le Monde de la Musique, and the Brahms Piano Trios (Virgin) with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon – offer a faithful reflection of the qualities of this loner who is nonetheless much admired by his peers.