Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard has long concentrated on contemporary music while exploring its deep connections to earlier repertory. Having emerged from Olivier Messiaen’s immediate circle, he has devoted particular attention to the European avant-garde of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He has recorded extensively for leading labels and has succeeded in placing contemporary works prominently in their catalogs. In 2024 he released an album devoted to Schubert’s Ländler.

Born in Lyon on September 9, 1957, Aimard first attended the Conservatoire de Lyon before continuing at the Conservatoire de Paris under Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen’s wife. He formed a close acquaintance with Messiaen himself and soon made that composer’s music a specialty. During his student years he captured four premiers prix. He subsequently worked with Maria Curcio in London and received composition instruction from György Kurtág in Budapest. Victory at the 1973 Olivier Messiaen International Competition opened the way for his professional career; three years later Pierre Boulez invited him to become pianist of the newly founded Ensemble InterContemporain. Aimard held that post for eighteen years, toured the United States with the ensemble, and frequently performed Boulez’s own compositions.

His recording career began in 1984 with an appearance on Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger. He has also maintained an active schedule in the traditional concerto literature, collaborating with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. In recital, most often in Paris and Lyon, he has presented programs under the heading Piano in the 20th Century that juxtapose contemporary and earlier works in unexpected pairings. In more recent years he has taken the podium as a conductor.

Aimard’s discography now comprises roughly 130 recordings, the majority devoted to contemporary repertoire. In 1996 he recorded György Ligeti’s complete piano music for Sony Classical; he has also appeared on Warner Classics, Teldec, and Deutsche Grammophon. A new exclusive contract with PentaTone Classics was announced in 2017, resulting in several releases, among them Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”) in 2021. The following year he joined Tamara Stefanovich for the duo recital Visions on PentaTone Classics, and in 2023 he recorded the Bartók piano concertos with the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen for the same label. He returned in 2024 with Schubert: Ländler, delivering rapid-fire accounts of numerous short Schubert dances.