Nicholas Angelich

Nicholas Angelich devoted much of his professional life to France, where his recordings for Harmonia Mundi and later Erato showcased bold, compelling accounts of core Romantic piano works. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 14, 1970, he began piano lessons at five under his mother’s instruction and, by age seven, was ready to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467. At thirteen the young musician entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, working with such distinguished faculty members as Aldo Ciccolini and Yvonne Loriod. Additional instruction came through master classes with Maria João Pires and Leon Fleisher; the latter presented him with a Young Talent Award at the Ruhr International Piano Festival. Other notable honors followed, among them second prize in the 1989 Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition in Cleveland, Ohio, and first prize in the 1994 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. On North American stages Angelich collaborated with the Utah Symphony led by Thierry Fischer, the San Antonio Symphony under Sebastian Lang-Lessing, and both the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic directed by Kurt Masur. His first commercial recording, devoted to Rachmaninov piano music, appeared on Harmonia Mundi in 1995. Throughout the 2000s he worked primarily with Virgin, concentrating on demanding Romantic-virtuoso repertoire. A BBC Proms debut under Yannick Nézet-Séguin took place in 2009, after which the same conductor invited him to Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. In France he performed regularly in the country’s leading concert halls. Chamber-music activity also formed an important part of his schedule; he frequently appeared and recorded with violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Gautier Capuçon. In the early 2010s Angelich joined the Erato roster. The 2016 release Dedication featured Liszt, Schumann, and Chopin pieces, each work dedicated to one of the other composers. Erato assembled many of his Brahms recordings into a ten-CD box set issued in 2017. His account of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, Op. 84, followed on the same label in 2021, bringing the total number of his commercial releases to roughly twenty. On April 18, 2022, Angelich died from a chronic lung condition whose existence he had kept private.