Pascal Amoyel

Pascal Amoyel won a Victoire de la Musique in 2005 in the ‘Instrumental Soloist of the Year’ category, and in 2010 was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in Warsaw by the prestigious Société Chopin for his complete recording of Chopin's Nocturnes alongside Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire, a recording described by Classica magazine as ‘a miracle that we no longer dared to hope for, that we listen to with our mouths agape at such beauty’. His interpretation of Liszt's Funérailles has also been hailed as one of the historical references, and his Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses by Liszt was voted one of the 5 best recordings of 2007 by the Arte channel.

At the age of 10, when he began his piano studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris (Marc André's class), he was quickly noticed by Georges Cziffra, whom he followed to France and Hungary. At the age of 17, after passing his scientific baccalauréat, he decided to devote himself entirely to music. Alongside his studies, he performed improvisation in the cabarets of Montmartre. He obtained a concert degree from the Ecole Normale de Paris, won First Prizes in Piano and Chamber Music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (class of Jacques Rouvier and Pascal Devoyon), became a laureate of the Menuhin and Cziffra Foundations, and then won First Prize at the Concours International des Jeunes Pianistes de Paris. He also received advice from Daniel Blumenthal, Aldo Ciccolini, Lazar Berman, Maria Curcio, Véra Gornostaeva, Dominique Merlet, Dériré N'Kaoua, Jacqueline Landowski and Lev Naoumov.

This marked the start of an international career that has taken him to some of the world's greatest concert halls: the Berlin Philharmonic, the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Cité de la Musique and Salle Pleyel in Paris, the United States, Canada, Russia, China, Korea... and festivals: La Roque d'Anthéron, Folles Journées in Nantes, Tokyo, La Chaise Dieu, La Grange de Meslay...

His recordings, alone or with the cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand, have won the highest awards: Gramophone, Cannes Classical Awards, ffff de Télérama, Diapason d'Or de l'année, ‘Choc’ du monde de la Musique, 10 de Classica, Grand Prix annuel de la critique allemande...

Pascal Amoyel is a composer and a laureate of the Fondation d'Entreprise Banque Populaire. He is notably the author of the cycle Job, ou Dieu dans la tourmente and Lettre à la femme aimée au sujet de la mort (on poems by Jean-Pierre Siméon).
He is also involved in creating new forms of concert: his show Block 15, ou la musique en résistance (directed by Jean Piat) was described as ‘a very pure and touching piece of research’ by the director Peter Brook, and was adapted for France Télévisions. He has also written and created the one-man shows Le pianiste aux 50 doigts ou l'incroyable destinée de György Cziffra, Le jour où j'ai rencontré Franz Liszt, and Looking for Beethoven (directed by Christian Fromont), which played to sold-out houses at the Avignon Festival and for several months at the Théâtre Le Ranelagh in Paris, as well as the family show Une petite histoire de la grande musique. As an actor, he has worked with and played opposite Jean Piat, Francis Huster and Brigitte Fossey. He also created ‘l'étrange concert’ for piano and magic, and will be giving his new creation ‘Une leçon de piano avec Chopin’ at the Théâtre Le Ranelagh from November 2024.

A piano and improvisation teacher at the CRR in Rueil-Malmaison and at Sciences Po, he created the Juniors Festival, in which children are the actors, including those with disabilities. He directs the Notes d'automne festival, which he founded, and has commissioned over sixty productions (with Jean-Pierre Marielle, Barbara Hendricks, Natalie Dessay, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Raphaël Enthoven, Richard Bohringer, Anne Roumanoff, Jacques Gamblin, Patrick Bruel and others). He is also artistic advisor to the Estival de la Bâtie d'Urfé.

He is the author of Si la musique t'était contée (bleu nuit), and has produced a series of programmes on France Culture entitled ‘Une histoire de la musique’. He was awarded the Grand Prix Arts-Deux Magots for ‘a musician with qualities of openness and generosity’, the Jean-Pierre Bloch Prize from the Licra for ‘the relationship to human rights in his work’, and the Médaille d'Or du rayonnement culturel de la Renaissance française. He is patron of the APTE association, which provides music lessons for autistic children.

He has been made a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite.
July 2024

July 2024