Francesco PIEMONTESI

• 3rd prize, Piano 2007
  

© CMIREB/IMKEB - Raf Thienpont

Francesco Piemontesi, born in Locarno in Switzerland in 1983, began learning to play the piano at the age of four. After studying with Nora Doallo in Lugano, he went to Prof. Arie Vardi at the Hanover University of music. Alongside his studies, Francesco Piemontesi took part in various master classes, gaining valuable inspiration from his work with Alexis Weissenberg, Mitsuko Uchida and Cécile Ousset.

He has been awarded prizes at the Chopin Competition in Göttingen and the Concours Clara Haskil in Vevey. Moreover, he is the recipient of the 2008 Gawon Music Award in Seoul.

Concerts have taken him to many European countries, to Asia and the USA. He has made guest appearances at such internationally recognized venues as the Ludwigsburg and the Rheingau Festival, the Martha Argerich Project, the Ruhr and Roque d'Anthéron Piano Festivals and the Orpheum Musiktage in Zurich. Piemontesi can look back on performances at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Philharmonie in Munich, the Tonhalle in Zurich and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

He has played as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Musikkollegium Winterthur and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, working with such conductors as Lawrence Foster, Christoph Poppen, Dmitrij Kitajenko and Howard Griffiths.

Highlights of following seasons include his debuts with the Prague Symphony, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo and the Tonkünstler Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev, Jiri Kout, Vassily Petrenko and Bruno Weil. He also has invitations to give piano recitals in important European centres and in the Carnegie Hall in New York.

Francesco nurtures a special artistic interest in chamber music. He has played with Yuri Bashmet, Heinrich Schiff, Maria Kliegel, Anne Queffélec, the Ebène quartet, and with members of the Berlin Philharmonic. For the past two seasons, he has been artistic director of the Bellinzona chamber music festival.

Complementing his numerous radio and television recordings he has recorded for EMI Classics. Francesco Piemontesi was named a BBC3 New Generation Artist, beginning fall 2009. This will include festival appearances, recitals at many prestigious halls (including London's Wigmore Hall and Manchester's Bridgewater Hall) and several concerts with the BBC Orchestras.

For more information, please log on to www.piemontesi.org.