IDIL BIRET

Idil Biret manifested an outstanding gift for music at the age of three and was trained at the Paris Conservatory under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger. She graduated at the age of fifteen with three first prizes. She studied piano with Alfred Cortot and was a lifelong disciple of Wilhelm Kempff. Since the age of sixteen Idil Biret has given concerts throughout the world with major orchestras including the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, BBC Orchestras, Leningrad Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Dresden Staatskapelle, Berlin Radio Symphony, French National Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony, Orchestre Suisse Romande, Tokyo Philharmonic and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Among the eminent conductors she collaborated with are Pierre Monteux, Joseph Keilberth, Hermann Scherchen, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Alexander Dimitreev, Eric Leinsdorf, Rudolf Kempe, Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sargent, Charles Mackerras, Moshe Atzmon, Antoni Wit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Andrew Davis, and Aaron Copland.

Idil Biret first toured the then USSR in 1960 upon the invitation of the great Russian pianist Emil Gilels giving sixteen concerts. Over the years she made many more visits performing nearly 100 concerts in Moscow, Leningrad and all the other major cities and in the great concert halls of the country. In the 1980s she toured Australia twice giving sixty concerts, fourteen of them at the Sydney opera House.

Idil Biret has participated at many Festivals including Montreal, Berlin, Paris, Nohant, Duszniki, Athens, Persepolis, Dubrovnik, Montreal, Royan, Montpellier and Istanbul. She has played Beethoven Sonatas with Yehudi Menuhin and the Mozart Concerto for two pianos with Wilhelm Kempff. Idil Biret has been member in the juries of many competitions including the Van Cliburn (USA), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Montreal (Canada), Busoni (Italy), Liszt (Weimar, Germany). She has received the following awards; Lily Boulanger Memorial, Boston; Harriet Cohen - Dinu Lipatti gold medal, London; Adelaide Ristori prize, Italy; Artistic Merit, Poland; Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite, France.

Over the years Idil Biret has made more than seventy records which include the world premiere recording of the nine Beethoven Symphonies' transcriptions by Liszt for EMI (6LP/1986). She also recorded the complete solo piano works and all the concertos of Chopin (15CD/1992), Brahms (12CD/1997), Rachmaninov (10CD/2000) and the three piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez (1995) for Naxos. In 1995 her recording of the complete works of Chopin was awarded a "Grand Prix du Disque Chopin" prize in Poland. The same year, her recording of the Boulez sonatas won the annual Golden Diapason award and was selected among the best recordings of the year by Le Monde newspaper in France. Idil Biret has recorded for Naxos the Etudes of Ligeti in 2001, the Firebird piano transcription by Stravinsky in 2002. Her recordings for Naxos have sold over one million copies worldwide.

Idil Biret has played in cycles of concerts Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas, 5 Concertos, Choral Fantasy, Triple Concerto and the piano transcriptions (by Liszt) of the nine Symphonies. She also played all the solo piano works of Brahms in a series of five recitals in Germany during the composer’s centennial anniversary in 1997.

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Wilhelm Kempff “My favourite disciple Idil Biret…This genius pianist belongs to the class of elect musicians of our time.”


www.idilbiret.org

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