Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Pierre -Laurent Aimard ( born September 9, 1957 in Lyon ) is a French pianist.

Life

Age of twelve began Pierre-Laurent Aimard his studies at the conservatory in Lyons. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod ( the wife of composer Olivier Messiaen ) at the Paris Conservatoire and with Maria Curcio in London. In 1973, he won the Chamber Music Prize at the Paris Conservatory and the first prize at the International Olivier Messiaen Competition, 1976, he was one of the founding members of the ensemble intercontemporain and played harpsichord, celesta, synthesizer, glockenspiel and organ. In 2006 he received the Prize of the Cultural Foundation of Dortmund, in 2009, he spent three years as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. Pierre -Laurent Aimard is a professor at the Academy of Music and Dance Cologne and at the Paris Conservatory.

2009 was the award-winning documentary of the two directors Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis, Pianomania, Aimard in the recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of Fugue. The film was well received nationally and internationally, was celebrated at many festivals and included in the catalog of the Goethe -Institut.

In 2012 he is touring with the German Chamber Philharmonic Bremen and accompanied the German baritone Matthias Goerne at recitals.

Repertoire

Aimard's particularly committed to contemporary music. He was a soloist with numerous premieres of works such as Répons by Pierre Boulez, piano piece XIV by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Le désenchantement du monde by Tristan Murail or the Etudes No. 11 and 13 of György Ligeti, whose entire piano works he recorded.

A testament to his versatility as a pianist is dealing with the classical and romantic repertoire, which he wants to abgewinnen new pages with curiosity and sense of structure and clarity. Reference is made to the highly acclaimed recordings of the Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5 by Beethoven and Dvorak's Piano Concerto (with Nikolaus Harnoncourt ). Among the interesting contributions to Mozart heard his 2006 recording of Mozart's piano concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In 2012 he played on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy a few of his works.