Bertrand Chamayou

French pianist Bertrand Chamayou was born in Toulouse on March 23, 1981. He took his first piano lessons at the age of eight, and went on to train at the Toulouse Conservatoire and then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris in the class of Jean-François Heisser, where he won a first prize in piano. Trained by such renowned pianists as Murray Perahia, Leon Fleisher and Aldo Ciccolini, he made a name for himself in international competitions, including Krainev in Ukraine (second prize in 1998) and the Long-Thibaud Competition (fourth prize in 2001). His career as a soloist on the greatest French and European stages, and then worldwide, is combined with a series of recordings for the Sony Classical, Naïve and Erato labels. In 2006, he won the Victoire de la musique classique award for best instrumental soloist for his debut album devoted to Liszt's Douze études d'exécution transcendante, followed by programs on Mendelssohn, Franck, Schubert, Chopin, Ravel(Complete Works for Solo Piano, 2016), Debussy and Saint-Saëns. His complete recording of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage was hailed as album of the year in 2012. Also composer of a Piano Concerto in his youth, Bertrand Chamayou is also an interpreter of contemporary musicians including Messiaen, Dutilleux, Kurtag, Nono, Adès and Mantovani. In 2018, the pianist will take up a residency at Radio France, before becoming director of the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Festival. After a solo recital devoted to lullabies entitled Good Night!, Chamayou builds a bridge between the compositions of Erik Satie and John Cage in the diptych Letter(s) to Erik Satie (2023) and Cage² (2024). In 2025, he returns to Ravel for the 150th anniversary of his birth, and in Fragments sets some of his pieces against tributes by Honegger, Tansman, Nin, Sciarrino, Viñes, Durieux, Montsalvatge and Betsy Jolas.

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