Visit this artist's website: http://helenegrimaud.com/

For pianist HÉLÈNE GRIMAUD – a truly multi-faceted and charismatic artist – music is a limitless passion. Hélène is a naturally emotive, spiritual performer whose success as an international artist is overwhelming. She has achieved her professional standing through an intense touring and recording program in which she shares her profound, original interpretations of classical music. A committed conservationist and human rights campaigner, Hélène also lends her prodigious talent and eloquence to the literary world with her successful books.

Highlights of the 2012/13 season include concerts at the Concertgebouw with the Gurzenich Orchestra; the opening gala concert at Norway’s new concert hall in Stavanger in the presence of the King and Queen; Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jakub Hrusa; St. Petersburg Philharmonia; a European tour with the Vienna Philharmonic; a tour of Asia with concerts and recitals in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and Korea; concerts in Switzerland and New York with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; a tour of South America with debut concerts with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra; and a UK tour with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In recital, Hélène returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall; to Prague as part of the [WATCH OUT] Dvorˇák Prague Festival’s Gala concert at Prague Castle; as well as touring France and Italy.  

Next season Brahms features prominently in Hélène’s plans, coinciding with the release of her recording of his concertos with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic; she will perform these works with the Philharmonia, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

An ardent and committed chamber musician, Hélène Grimaud performs regularly in the most prestigious festivals and cultural capitals with a wide range of collaborators, including Sol Gabetta, Thomas Quasthoff, Rolando Villazòn, Jan Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen and the Capuçon brothers, Jörg Widmann, and Christine Schäfer. This autumn she will give concerts in Germany and France with Sol Gabetta to support the release of their duo CD on Deutsche Grammophon featuring cello sonatas by Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich, and Debussy, recreating the program of a concert the two artists performed together at the 2011 Gstaad Festival and which the Berner Zeitung described as “breathtaking.”

An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002, Hélène is one of DG’s most important recording artists with a string of imaginative and highly successful discs. Her recent 2011 release, Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 19 and No. 23 with Kammerorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, also featured a collaboration with singer Mojca Erdmann in a recording of Mozart’s “Ch’io mi scordi di te?” K. 505, while her 2010 release, the solo recital album Resonances, featured the music by Mozart, Berg, Liszt, and Bartók that she plays on this evening’s recital. Previous DG recordings include Bach’s solo and concerto works in which she directed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the keyboard, and a Beethoven disc with Staatskapelle Dresden and Vladimir Jurowski, Reflection and Credo (both of which feature a number of works linked thematically), a Chopin and Rachmaninoff sonatas disc, and a recording of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra. Hélène is also featured on two recent DVD releases: the 2010 ECHO Klassik award-winning DVD of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major with Vladimir Jurowski and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Recipient of numerous awards worldwide, Hélène Grimaud received the 2012 Preis der Dresdner Musikfestspiele and in 2009 the Musikfest Bremen Award. She has been appointed Officier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministère de la Culture in 2002 and Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2008. In 2004 she received a Victoire d’honneur at the Victoires de la Musique, and in 2005 she won the ECHO Instrumentalist of the Year Award. Author of two very successful books, Variations Sauvages and Leçons Particulières, she champions many charitable causes, including the Wolf Conservation Center that she founded in upper New York State in 1999, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and Amnesty International.