©Photo: Marco Borggreve

Bertrand Chamayou

Piano

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“Chamayou is a remarkable musician, no question.”
(Tim Ashley, The Guardian)

Bertrand Chamayou has mastered an extensive repertoire displaying striking assurance, imagination, artistic approach, and remarkable consistency in his performances. He is a regular performer in venues such as the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Lincoln Center, the Herkulessaal Munich and London’s Wigmore Hall. He has appeared at major festivals including New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival and Beethovenfest Bonn.

This season sees him appear with Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Lorenzo Viotti, London Symphony Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth, SWR Symphonieorchester and Brad Lubman, Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Elim Chan, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Semyon Bychkov, and the Orchestre de Paris. A tour with Les Siècles and Roth will lead him to important venues across Europe.

Bertrand Chamayou has worked with orchestras including Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, hr-Sinfonieorchester, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Recent highlights have included his celebrated debuts with New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, Pittsburgh Symphony and Budapest Festival Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Atlanta Symphony and Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig. Chamayou collaborated with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Neville Marriner, Michel Plasson, Stéphane Denève, Emmanuel Krivine and Andris Nelsons.

Chamayou is a regular chamber music performer, with partners including Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Quatuor Ébène, Antoine Tamestit and Sol Gabetta. Following his successful performances at Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series and Salzburg’s Easter Festival, this season sees him perform recitals at Den Norske Opera, Teatro San Carlo Naples, SWR Freiburg and with Sol Gabetta at Philharmonie Essen, in Lucerne, Hannover, Semperoper Dresden and at Konzerthaus Freiburg.

Bertrand Chamayou has made a number of highly successful recordings, including a Naïve CD of music by César Franck, which was awarded several accolades. For his recording of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 5 he was awarded the Gramophone Recording of the Year Award 2019. The only artist to win France’s prestigious Victoires de la Musique on four occasions, he has an exclusive recording contract with Warner/Erato and was awarded the 2016 ECHO Klassik for his recording of Ravel’s complete works for solo piano.

Bertrand Chamayou was born in Toulouse; his musical talent was quickly noted by pianist Jean-François Heisser, who later became his professor at the Paris Conservatoire. He completed his training with Maria Curcio in London.

Gallery

“(Chamayou) has the incredible rhythmic poise and big technique that you need for the piece (Bartok’s second piano concerto).”

(Seattle Times, March 2017)

“Chamayou has the right temperament for this music, from thundering climaxes to the most delicate passages along the way.”

(Bachtrack, July 2017)

“Chamayou’s scintillating fingers, immaculate octave and chord playing were not merely brilliant ends in themselves, but rather the means by which Liszt expressed his symphonic thought. His projection was pin.point and incisive, like a laser beam scything through metal plates. … Liszt knew how to grandstand and bring down the house and Chamayou duly obliged.”

(The Straits Times, December 2016)

“But there was also plenty of brilliance, particularly in the dizzying Toccata which – justifiably – brought members of the usually settled Wigmore Hall audience to their feet.”

(Music OMH, October 2015)