Lise de la Salle, Klavierabend

Lise de la Salle reached a level of such obviousness, that it prevents us from imagining any other possible interpretation

Pierre Gervasoni / Le Monde

LISE DE LA SALLE – Piano

During her career of over 15 years, including award-winning Naïve recordings and international concert appearances, Lise de la Salle has established herself as one of today’s exciting young artists and a musician of sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe… the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”

The 2019/20 season is marked by the release of her new solo album Dances with Naïve. The programme travels around four musical cultures (Slavic Soul, French Touch, Spanish Influence, American Dream). She premieres it in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and across the season takes it to Germany, France, Switzerland, UK, USA and the United Arab Emirates.

This season she also performs recitals in London’s International Piano Series and at Kings Place, as well as various venues in France. She also works with Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and James Conlon, Dortmunder Philharmoniker for their first ever New Year’s concert, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester with Lawrence Foster, Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead’s The Sage, and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

She has played with many leading orchestras across the globe: from the USA (Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta symphony orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra), to the UK (London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra); across Germany (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Dresden Staatskapelle, WDR Sinfoniorchester Köln); in her native France (Orchestre National de France and Lyon); in Italy (Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della RAI di Torino); further afield with Belgium National Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic; and in Asia (NHK and Singapore Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan), among many others.

She has collaborated with conductors such as Fabio Luisi, James Conlon, Antonio Pappano, Rafael Payare, Karina Kanellakis, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Lioner Bringuier, Fabien Gabel, Marek Janowski, Robin Ticciati, Osmö Vanska, James Gaffigan, Lawrence Foster, Semyon Bychkov, and Dennis Russell Davies.

She performs in the world’s most esteemed concert halls – Vienna Musikverein, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Herkulessaal in Munich, Berlin Philharmonie, Tonhalle Zurich, Lucerne KKL, Bozar in Brussels, Wigmore and Royal Festival halls, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Hollywood Bowl. She appears in festivals including Klavier Festival Ruhr, Bad Kissingen, Verbier, La Roque d’Anthéron, Bucharest Enescu Festival, San Francisco Performances, Chicago Symphony recital series, Aspen and Ravinia Festivals.

She also takes pleasure in educational outreach and conducts masterclasses in many of the cities in which she performs.

Her critically acclaimed Naïve CDs feature an all-Chopin disc with a live recording of the Piano Concerto No.2, Op.21 with Fabio Luisi conducting Staatskapelle Dresden. In May 2011, Naïve issued her sixth recording, released in celebration of Liszt’s Bicentennial. The album received Diapason magazine’s Diapason d’Or and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, which stated, “The wonderfully gifted 23-year-old Lise de la Salle gives us a Liszt recital of astonishing strength, poetry, and, for one so young, musical maturity.” In 2018 she released Bach Unlimited – a Bach-focused album for Naïve including the ‘Italian’ Concerto, Liszt’s Fantasy & Fugue on the Theme

B.A.C.H. and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne – and Paris-Moscow, recorded with French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca, offering a celebration of the musical relationship between Paris and Moscow (Sony Classical).

Born in Cherbourg, France, in 1988, Lise de la Salle started the piano at age four and gave her first concert five years later in a live broadcast on Radio France. She studied at Paris Conservatoire and made her concerto debut at 13 with Beethoven’s No.2 in Avignon. She made her Paris recital debut at the Louvre before going on tour with Orchestre National d’Île de France, playing Haydn’s Concerto in D major. She has worked closely with Pascal Nemirovski and was long-term mentor of Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux.

In 2004, Lise de la Salle won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. Later that year, the organisation presented both her New York and Washington, DC, debuts. At the Ettlingen International Competition in Germany, Lise de la Salle won First Prize and the Bärenreiter Award. She has also won First Prize in many French piano competitions.