Hélène Grimaud

Hélène Grimaud, the French pianist born in Aix-en-Provence in 1969, has long distinguished herself through daring and deeply personal readings of both familiar and obscure works for the instrument. Both parents taught for a living, and she first touched the piano at seven under Jacqueline Courtin’s guidance before continuing with Pierre Barbizet in Marseille. At thirteen she entered the Paris Conservatory to work with Jacques Rouvier; three years later she claimed the premier prix in piano performance and stayed on for the cycle de perfectionnement, also receiving lessons from György Sándor and Leon Fleisher. The next year brought her first recording—Rachmaninov’s Sonata No. 2 paired with the Etudes-tableaux op. 33—which earned the Grand Prix du Disque in 1986.

Soon afterward she stepped beyond the conservatory walls, making her recital debut in Tokyo in 1987 and, at Daniel Barenboim’s invitation, appearing that same year with the Orchestre de Paris. Invitations from leading orchestras around the globe followed steadily. During the 1990s she committed to disc Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2, Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major, and the live Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15. In 1995 she first joined the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado; four years later she made her initial appearance with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic while simultaneously establishing the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, a project reflecting her lifelong commitment to wildlife preservation.

She became an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist in 2002 and was inducted into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Around the same period she began writing; her memoir Variations Sauvages appeared in 2003, followed by Leçons particulières in 2005 and Retour à Salem in 2013. That same year she received an Echo Klassik Award for the album Duo, recorded with cellist Sol Gabetta. Memory, issued in 2018, explored pieces by Chopin, Debussy and others. In the 2019-2020 season she performed at Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nezet-Seguin, appeared in Luxembourg and Munich with MusicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis, and toured Germany alongside the Bamberger Symphoniker and Jakub Hrusa while also presenting selections from Memory across the United States and continuing her work at the Wolf Conservation Center. Concentrating on the music of Valentin Silvestrov, she released the solo recital Hélène Grimaud plays Valentin Silvestrov in 2022; the following year brought Silvestrov: Silent Songs, a collaboration with baritone Konstantin Krimmel.