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PHILIPPE BIANCONI
Philippe Bianconi
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.