Claire-Marie Le Guay

Claire-Marie Le Guay "organises her narrative with ample gestures, as if touching the movements of an inner clock hidden beneath the eloquence of the song" (Pianist). 

A soloist on the international scene, Claire-Marie Le Guay has performed at New York's Carnegie Hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, Tokyo's Suntory Hall, the Festival de La Roque-d'Anthéron and the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in Germany. Winner of several international competitions, she plays with the same commitment in recital, in chamber music (with François Salque, Amaury Coeytaux, Magali Mosnier or the Modigliani Quartet in particular) or in concerto with numerous orchestras, such as the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, the Camerata Salzburg, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Kremerata Baltica, the New Japan Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle de Weimar, under the direction of Daniel Barenboim, Louis Langrée in particular.

His extensive discography has been critically acclaimed; Gramophone magazine calls it a "masterly contribution". With the release of her recording Joies de l'âme in 2021, Claire-Marie Le Guay has returned to Liszt, whose interpretation brought her to the attention of the general public at the age of 19. This is her fourth recording for Mirare after Voyage en Russie, Bach, and Schubert "Wanderer" with François Salque.

Her wide-ranging repertoire includes the music of her time (Henri Dutilleux, Thierry Escaich, of whom she is the dedicatee of several works and one of the most faithful interpreters, Sofia Goubaïdulina and Bruno Mantovani).

A laureate of the Lake Como Piano Foundation, Claire-Marie Le Guay continued her training there after her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (CNSMDP) with such musical personalities as Dmitri Bashkirov, Alicia de Larrocha and Andreas Staier, as well as in Berlin, with Daniel Barenboim.

Since 2001, she has been teaching at the CNSMDP, where she places great importance on transmission. A committed artist, she collaborated with the Dijon Opera from 2012 to 2020 in the development of artistic projects for young audiences.

Claire-Marie Le Guay is Eisenhower Fellow (2015). She has been the artistic director of the Dinard International Music Festival from 2029 to 2023. She is in residence at La Grande Scène du Chesnay Theater since 2019 and at La Maison de la musique de Nanterre concert hall, to program series of concerts.

She is the author of the books La vie est plus belle en musique (Flammarion, 2018) and C'est la nuit qu'il est beau de croire à la lumière (Flammarion, 2022), prefaced by Erik Orsenna, from the Académie française.

January 2024