Dana Ciocarlie

Pianist Dana Ciocarlie has concentrated on the output of Schumann and Schubert, issuing a live recording of the former composer’s complete keyboard works. She also devotes substantial attention to contemporary repertoire and serves as dedicatee of multiple new pieces.

Born in Bucharest on November 26, 1968, Ciocarlie received her earliest instruction in Romania within the national piano lineage associated with Dinu Lipatti and Clara Haskil. She later relocated to Paris, pursuing studies at the École normale de musique de Paris under Viktoria Melki, herself a pupil of Alfred Cortot, and at the Conservatoire de Paris with Dominique Merlet and Georges Pludermacher. Additional lessons followed with Christian Zacharias and Dmitri Bashkirov; Zacharias directed her focus toward Schubert’s music. Several important prizes propelled her initial career, notably first prizes at the Yamaha Foundation competition in 1993 and the Yvonne LeFébure Foundation’s Pro Musicis prize in 1996. That same year she placed second at the Robert Schumann International Competition for Pianists and Singers in Zwickau, Germany, inaugurating an extended involvement with Schumann’s compositions.

Ciocarlie entered the recording studio with the 2000 release Romania on the L’Empreinte Digitale label. Her recital appearances have included the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and venues in Japan, the United States, Indonesia, and the Philippines. An active chamber musician, she has partnered with pianists Zacharias and Anne Quéffelec as well as the Diotima and Talich Quartets, among numerous other ensembles. A committed proponent of new music, she has presented works composed expressly for her by Édith Canat de Chizy, Karol Beffa, Nicolas Bacri, and additional composers. She has issued more than ten albums, among them a complete cycle of Schumann’s piano music captured live in Paris between 2012 and 2016. In 2021 she appeared on the chamber-music recording Bubbles issued by La Dolce Volta. Ciocarlie currently instructs chamber music at the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon and maintains a faculty position at the École normale de Paris.