Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

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

Engagements during the 2023/24 season include Les Siècles under Francois Xavier-Roth, performing both Ravel concerti with Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, as well as Kyoto Symphony Orchestra under Junichi Hirokami with Bartók’s fiendish Piano Concerto No.2. He also appears with Manchester Camerata at the Enescu Festival in Romania with Gábor Takacs-Nagy and will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with Karol Szymanowski Filharmonia in Kraków, under the baton of Antoni Wit.

In recital, Bavouzet continues his three-year residency at Wigmore Hall, titled ‘Autour de Debussy’, which includes solo recitals and chamber appearances with Steven Isserlis, Quatuor Danel and Orsino Ensemble among others. His solo recital at Wigmore Hall in February shall consist of a unique pairing of Debussy, Liszt and Massenet, a programme which he shall also be taking to Sage Gateshead, SJE Oxford and Hamamatsu in Japan. Other recitals include a Rachmaninov-centred two-piano performance with the Chamber Music Society at New York’s Lincoln Centre.

Bavouzet’s previous notable performances include Carnegie Hall with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and a BBC Proms appearance with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon. He has recently appeared with Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, play-directed a three concerto programme with Seattle Symphony Orchestra and toured the Baltics with Manchester Camerata. Bavouzet is a frequent guest of the Verbier festival, at which he has also been interviewed several times. In summer 2023, Bavouzet successfully completed a recital tour, performing at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Bravo! Vail Festival and Aspen, finishing across the Atlantic at Finland’s Mänttä Music Festival and St Ursanne in Switzerland.

Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos. His most recent release, A Musical Tribute to Pierre Sancan with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier, won the Gramophone Editor’s Choice and Diapason d’Or awards. His complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series has been named a modern benchmark by Gramophone and his The Beethoven Connection received numerous accolades from magazines including the New York Times, BBC Music Magazine and Choc-Classica. Ongoing cycles include the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, the fourth volume of which was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2020. In September of the same year, the complete Beethoven Concertos were released with Swedish Chamber Orchestra play-directed by Bavouzet.

Other recordings include Bartók’s Piano Concerti and the complete Prokofiev Piano Concerti with 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 the Ravel Piano concerti with BBC Symphony Orchestra which won both a Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have also garnered Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’Année awards.

Bavouzet has worked closely with Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltan Kocsis, 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 Hamptons. In 2012 he was ICMA Artist of the Year and in 2008 he was awarded Beijing’s first ever Elite Prize for his Beethoven complete sonata series.