Olivier Baumont

Olivier Baumont, a French harpsichordist, has earned recognition both on stage and in research through his focus on French Baroque keyboard literature. He approached the instrument without prior piano training, drawing on his family’s longstanding interest in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history. His teachers included Kenneth Gilbert and Huguette Dreyfus, and he took part in Gustav Leonhardt’s master classes held in Cologne. At the Paris Conservatory he captured first prize in harpsichord in 1981 and first prize in chamber music the following year; he also claimed the Concours de Solistes de Radio France in 1982. He appears regularly at festivals throughout Europe, England, and the United States and has traveled extensively for concerts. Since 1992 he has led the Festival Couperin in Chaumes-en-Brie. More than forty recordings stand to his credit, among them the complete Rameau harpsichord pieces issued by Accord-Universal and the full Couperin and Louis-Claude Daquin collections released by Erato-Warner Classic. Additional discs feature music by Handel, Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach, and selected eighteenth-century Russian and American composers. The Jean-François Dandrieu harpsichord program received the Choc du Monde de la Musique. In the twentieth-century domain he has championed works by Manuel de Falla, Milhaud, and Poulenc. Baumont joined the Paris Conservatory faculty as professor of harpsichord in September 2001. He has written a life of François Couperin, prepared editions of harpsichord music by Michel Corrette and Jacques Duphly, and published articles in various musicological journals.