Description

Michel Béroff was born in Epinal in 1950. After studying at the conservatory of Nancy, he won the first prize in piano at the CNSM de Paris in 1966 under the tutelage of Pierre Sancan. The following year, he was awarded the first prize at the inaugural Olivier Messiaen International Competition. Since then, he has been considered one of the most important interpreters of this composer. Michel Béroff’s career has taken him worldwide, performing with prestigious orchestras under the batons of conductors such as Abbado, Barenboim, Bernstein, Boulez, Dohnanyi, Dorati, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gielen, Inbal, Jochum, Leinsdorf, Masur, Ozawa, Previn, Rostropovitch, Sinopoli, Solti, Tennsted, Tilson-Thomas, and Zinman. His chamber music activities have led him to collaborate actively with Martha Argerich, Barbara Hendricks, Jean-Philippe Collard, Lynn Harrell, Augustin Dumay, and Pierre Amoyal. Despite an intense soloist career, Michel Béroff began a conducting career and has been teaching at the CNSM de Paris since 1989. For “Wiener Urtext,” he participated in a new edition of Claude Debussy’s works. The Japanese television network NHK sought him out in 2006 for a series of fifteen master classes on French music. As an exclusive EMI artist for over twenty years, Michel Béroff has made more than 50 recordings, including complete works for piano and orchestra by Liszt, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky under the direction of Kurt Masur and Seiji Ozawa, as well as works by Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saens, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Stravinsky, and Bartok. For Deutsche Grammophon, Michel Béroff recorded Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Claudio Abbado. For Denon, he recorded, in five discs, the complete piano music of Claude Debussy. His recordings have been awarded five “Grand Prix du Disque.” In recent seasons, Michel Béroff has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pierre Boulez, the New York Philharmonic with Kurt Masur, as well as the London Philharmonic for a major tour of England and Spain. He has completed three tours in Japan, one with the Philharmonia under the direction of Esa-Peka Salonen, performed the complete piano music of Debussy and Janacek in concert in Paris, and given concerts with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Christophe Eschenbach. Additionally, he has given numerous concerts in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Greece, Brazil, Korea, and China.