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33 PHILIPPE BIANCONI On the byways of those early years, he met Gaby Casadesus: with her he put the finishing touches to the purity of style, the clarity of musical expression he had cultivated since the start of his musical education. With the Russian pianist Vitalij Margulis, he found that density of sound which is his alone, and drew from the innermost recesses of the text, from the depths of the harmonies, that expressiveness which he always places at the service of meaning. And then: two birds with one stone! Having won First Prize at the Robert Casadesus Competition in Cleveland, then Second Prize at the Van Cliburn Competition, he triumphed at Carnegie Hall, and his American career was launched . . . Then came Europe, France, the world, in recital or alongside today’s most eminent musicians. And, still following in the footsteps of Gaby and Robert Casadesus, but also of Nadia Boulanger, it was only natural that he should succeed Philippe Entremont as artistic director of the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau for five years. In concert, the vibration of the air when silence fills the hall is precious to him, liberating and inspiring. He sometimes takes on the most incredible challenges, such as playing the two Brahms concertos in one evening. When he returns to his corner of paradise somewhere in the south, between the sea and the mountains, he remembers his youth, his parents who took him to the opera, and the love for the voice that he felt at a very early age and that will never leave him. He remembers Hermann Prey, whom he met at the age of twenty-two, and Schubert, who brought them together on record and, for eight years, on the great stages of the world, the Wigmore Hall, La Scala, Munich, New York . . . Then his piano sings, breathes, becomes body and soul. And Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, not to mention his beloved French masters, Debussy and Ravel, in sublime abandonment, confide the secrets of their treasures to this musician-poet.