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27 PHILIPPE BIANCONI Philippe Bianconi, the poet of the piano Since his success at the Van Cliburn International Competition in the 1980s, Philippe Bianconi has made an international career, pursuing his musical itinerary and patiently carving out his path far frommedia hype. A pupil of Simone Delbert-Février at the Conservatoire in Nice, where he was born, Philippe Bianconi is the only major French pianist to have entered the international competition circuit without previously studying at the Paris Conservatoire. His prizes at the Jeunesses Musicales International Competition in Belgrade, the Robert Casadesus International Competition in Cleveland, and notably the Van Cliburn Competition were his launching pads for a brilliant career inNorthAmerica. He appeared at CarnegieHall in NewYork in 1987, andwent on play withmany of the leading NorthAmerican orchestras, including Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Montreal. His career then took on a worldwide dimension, and from Berlin to Sydney, Beijing to London, Paris to San Francisco, he has received high praise for the poetry of his playing and the beauty of his tone. The release of his disc of Debussy’s Préludes on La Dolce Volta was one of the major recording events of the year 2012, winning a deluge of international distinctions and a nomination at the Victoires de la Musique Classique in the category ‘Recording of the Year’. Since 2014 Philippe Bianconi has been musical director of the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau (part of the Fontainebleau Schools, a French institution whose mission is to give foreign students a thorough grounding in French culture in the twin spheres of music and architecture), after such distinguished predecessors as Philippe Entremont and Nadia Boulanger, who trained the elite of American composers, among themAaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Astor Piazzolla, Philip Glass, and Quincy Jones.