PHILIPPE BIANCONI – Pianist

French pianist Philippe Bianconi has been described as an artist whose playing is “always close to the soul of the music, filling the space with poetry and life,” (Washington Post) and who offers “an extraordinary exhibition of musicianship, technical control and good taste.” (The London Times)

Bianconi was awarded the Silver Medal in the Seventh Van Cliburn International Competition and made his acclaimed recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1987. Since then, he has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras, including those of Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore, Atlanta, Dallas, and Montreal, and has performed at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony under James Conlon. He has collaborated with such distinguished conductors as Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kurt Masur, David Zinman, JoAnn Falletta, Marek Janowski, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Edo de Waart, Yoav Talmi, Yakov Kreizberg…

In Europe, Bianconi has appeared with many orchestras, including his special performance of Rachmaninov’s 2^nd Piano Concerto with James Conlon and the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Paris in the sold out Paris Garnier Opera House, the Orchestre National de France, Berlin Radio Symphony, Netherlands Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. He has invited a number of times in Australia, performing with the Melbourne Symphony, West Australian Symphony in Perth and the Sydney Symphony.

An active and acclaimed recitalist, Philippe Bianconi has performed around the world, including at New York’s Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Berlin Philharmonie and in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Sydney.

In 2012 Philippe Bianconi started a collaboration with the Label La Dolce Volta and his recording of the Integral of the Debussy Preludes was awarded DIAPASON D’OR of the year and 1^st Prize of the Charles Cros Academy. This was followed by a record dedicated to Chopin including the 4 Ballades and in the summer 2016 was issued a Schumann album, including Carnaval and Davidsbündlertänze immediately hailed by the press  :

 Additionally, he has recorded for the Labels Lyrinx,  Aeon and Le Chant du Monde. On Denon, he recorded  the  three Schubert lieder cycles with Hermann Prey.

Between 2013 and 2017, Philippe Bianconi was also  Director of the American Conservatory at the Palais de Fontainebleau and joined  a celebrated coterie of previous faculty and directors, among them Maurice Ravel, Robert Casadesus, Henri Dutilleux, Leonard Bernstein and Nadia Boulanger.

Founded in 1921, the American Conservatory has trained an enormous number of legendary musicians, including Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Astor Piazzolla, Phillip Glass and Quincy Jones.

2018 Philippe Bianconi was appointed  Professor at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.