| Biography | Born in 1983 in Locarno, the Swiss-Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi studied with Cécile Ousset and Arie Vardi, before building a close collaboration with the pianists Alexis Weissenberg and Alfred Brendel. He then rose to international prominence receiving prizes at several major competitions including at the 2007 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
Piemontesi was then to perform at many of the worlds most prestigious concert halls, such as the Vienna Musikverein, New York Carnegie Hall, Tokyo Suntory Hall and Berlin Philharmonie. Festival appearances have included the BBC Proms, Lucerne Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, the Festival dAix-en-Provence, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, La Roque dAnthéron, Klavier-Festival Ruhr and the Rheingau Musik Festival. He received a Fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2009-2011. Piemontesi was awarded Best Newcomer at the 2012 BBC Music Magazine Awards, and was announced as the new Artistic Director of the Settimane Musicali di Ascona festival in the same year.
As a concerto soloist, Piemontesi has quickly earned a superb reputation particularly for his interpretations of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel. He has performed as soloist with the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, DSO and RSB Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors as Zubin Mehta, Marek Janowski, Sir Roger Norrington, Jiri Belohlavek, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Sakari Oramo and Mikhail Pletnev.
Highlights of the current and forthcoming seasons include performances with the NHK Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, NDR Radiophilharmonie with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charles Dutoit, Manfred Honeck, Neeme Järvi, Michael Sanderling. He will perform solo recitals at Philharmonie Berlin, Londons Wigmore Hall, Paris Salle Gaveau, Vienna´s Konzerthaus, Lincoln Center New York, Washingtons Kennedy Center as well as further concerts in Brussels, Milan, Tokyo and Rome.
His chamber music partners include Juliane Banse, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Emmanuel Pahud, Yuri Bashmet, Heinrich Schiff, Angelika Kirchschlager, Jörg Widmann and the Ebène Quartet.
Piemontesi records exclusively for Naïve Classique and will release his second disc for the label in 2014. He has previously recorded highy acclaimed discs for EMI, Claves and avanti classic. |