Bertrand Chamayou

The French pianist Bertrand Chamayou, was born in Toulouse in 1981, was accepted into Jean-François Heisser’s piano class at the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of 15. He completed his training with Maria Curcio in London and also received important inspiration from Leon Fleisher, Dmitri Bashkirov, and Murray Perahia. Chamayou emerged early on as a winner of several competitions, including the Concours International Marguerite Long. He has performed as a soloist with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. His musical partners have included Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Elim Chan, Philippe Herreweghe, Philippe Jordan, Andris Nelsons, Sir Antonio Pappano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Tugan Sokhiev. In the 2024-25 season, he performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the BBC Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Les Siècles, among others. He toured North America with Barbara Hannigan and gave duo recitals with Sol Gabetta. Chamayou performed piano duets with Leif Ove Andsnes, with whom he will again appear in the 2025-26 season in concerts in Dijon, Madrid, Oslo, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Contemporary music and collaborations with György Kurtág, Henri Dutilleux, Thomas Adés, and Michael Jarrell also play an important role in his career. Chamayou has won the Victoires de la musique five times; he received the Echo Klassik Award in 2016 for his recording of Maurice Ravel’s complete piano works, and his latest album, Fragments (2025), is also devoted to Ravel. Chamayou has been Artistic Director of the Festival Ravel in the French Basque Country since 2021.

One previous Lucerne Festival appearance: on 24 November 2011 in a Debut recital including works by César Franck and Franz Liszt.

June 2025