Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Piano

Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as the Cleveland, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François-Xavier Roth, Vasily Petrenko, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, Louis Langrée and Andrew Davis, among others.

Highlights of the 2022/2023 season included performances with the Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony orchestras, Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Bavouzet returned to Seattle Symphony Orchestra for a play-direct programme of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart, and performed with Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg at the Bischwiller Festival. He continued his relationship with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy which included a tour of the Baltics. With Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet also performed Mozart concertos with Orchestre de Chambre de Genève and Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra.

In recital, Bavouzet continues his three-year residency at the Wigmore Hall, titled “Autour de Debussy”, which includes solo recitals and a chamber concert with the Orsino Ensemble. They also performed at the Helsinki Seriös chamber music series. Other recitals include two Debussy programmes at the Ferrara Musica festival, Sydney City Recital Hall and Sala São Paulo, to name a few.

Bavouzet has performed at New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and BBC Proms with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon. He has recently appeared with the Camerata RCO, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln and Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and toured the UK with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier.

Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos. His most recent release has been the final instalment in the highly successful complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series, and his album The Beethoven Connection received numerous accolades from magazines including Gramophone, BBC Music, Choc-Classica and The New York Times. Ongoing cycles include the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy; their fourth volume was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2020. In September 2020, the complete Beethoven piano concertos were released with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra play-directed by Bavouzet. Other recordings include Bartók’s and Prokofiev’s piano concertos with the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda; the latter won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Under Yan Pascal Tortelier, he recorded Stravinsky’s complete works for piano and orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, and Ravel’s piano concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra which won both a Gramophone and BBC magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have also garnered Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’Année awards.

Bavouzet has worked closely with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bruno Mantovani and Jörg Widmann, and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music and an Advisory Board Member of the Pianofest in the Hamptoms. In 2012, he was named Artist of the Year at the International Classical Music Awards, and in 2008 in Beijing, he was awarded the first ever Elite Prize for the Best Concert Series for his complete Beethoven sonata series.