Lise de la Salle

Piano

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With a career of more than 15 years, award-winning Naïve recordings, and international concert appearances – Lise de la Salle has established herself as one of today’s exciting young artists and as a musician of real sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe… the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”

In 2023/24 she joins Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Thomas Søndergård on tour in Scotland, then for the orchestra’s three-night residency at Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus. Other season’s highlights include major performances with Orchestre National de France and Stephane Denève on tour, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra under Simone Young, Milan I Pomeriggi Musicali and James Feddeck, as well as Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Macao Symphony orchestra and Beethoven Orchester Bonn.

She has played with many leading orchestras across the globe: from the USA (Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta Symphony Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra), to the UK (Philharmonia, BBC Symphony, London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras), across Europe in Germany (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Dresden Staatskapelle, WDR Sinfoniorchester Köln, hr-Sinfonieorchester), through her native France (Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France and Lyon), also performing in Italy (Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della RAI), further afield with Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and in Asia (NHK Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony) among many others, and collaborated with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Fabio Luisi, James Conlon, Gianandrea Noseda Krzysztof Urbanski, Antonio Pappano, Rafael Payare, Karina Kanellakis, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Lioner Bringuier, Fabien Gabel, Marek Janowski, Robin Ticciati, Osmö Vanska, James Gaffigan, Semyon Bychkov, and Dennis Russell Davies.

She performs in the world’s most esteemed concert halls – Vienna Musikverein, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Herkulessaal in Munich, Berlin Philharmonie, Tonhalle Zürich, Lucerne KKL, Bozar in Brussels, Wigmore and Royal Festival Halls, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Hollywood Bowl, and festivals – Klavier Festival Ruhr and Bad Kissingen, Verbier, La Roque d’Anthéron, Bucharest Enescu Festival, San Francisco Performances, Chicago Symphony recital series, Aspen and Ravinia Festivals. In 2014 she became the first Artist-in-Residence of the Zürich Opera and performed in New York in the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center with Wiener Symphoniker.

She also takes pleasure in educational outreach and conducts master classes in many of the cities in which she performs.

Among her critically acclaimed Naïve CDs features an all-Chopin disc with a live recording of the Piano Concerto No.2 with Fabio Luisi conducting Staatskapelle Dresden. In May 2011, Naïve issued her sixth recording, released in celebration of Liszt’s Bicentennial. The album received Diapason Magazine’s Diapason d’Or and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, which stated “…the wonderfully gifted 23-year-old Lise de la Salle gives us a Liszt recital of astonishing strength, poetry, and, for one so young, musical maturity.” Two recordings were released in 2018: the first Bach Unlimited is a Bach-focused album recorded with Naïve including the Italian Concerto, Liszt’s Fantasy & Fugue on the Theme B.A.C.H. and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, and the second album Paris-Moscow is recorded with French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca, the album offers a celebration of the musical relationship between Paris and Moscow (Sony Classical). In 2020, she recorded Chausson Concert with Daniel Hope and Zürcher Kammerorchester (Deutsche Grammophon). Her latest album (2021) When do we Dance? presents an odyssey of dances through a whole century.

Lise de la Salle started the piano at age four and gave her first concert 5 years later in a live broadcast on Radio France. She studied at Paris Conservatoire and made her concerto debut at 13 with Beethoven Symphony No.2 in Avignon, her Paris recital debut at the Louvre before going on tour with Orchestre National d’Ile de France, playing Haydn’s Concerto in D Major. She has worked closely with Pascal Nemirovski and was long-term advisee of Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux.

In 2004, Lise de la Salle won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. Later that year, the organisation presented both her New York and Washington, D.C. debuts. At the Ettlingen International Competition in Germany, Lise de la Salle won First Prize and the Bärenreiter Award. She has also won First Prize in many French piano competitions.

“de la Salle’s encore of the Bach-Busoni Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, [was] wallowing in rich harmonies, calmed nerves and soothed the soul.”

Backtrack, February 2023

“After the stunning NSO debut of Lise de la Salle in 2017, one expected exceptional pyrotechnics from the French pianist. She delivered that in the daring finale of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, whirring through the reams of passagework as Urbański lightly daubed dabs of orchestral color around her. The folk music-inspired section shone in particular, accented by percussive col legno strings.”

(Washington Classical Review, 2019)