Francesco Piemontesi

Francesco Piemontesi is a pianist with a wide repertory but a specialization in <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a> and the early Romantics. He has appeared with many leading orchestras and at major venues in Europe and the U.S., performing a complete cycle of <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a>'s keyboard works at London's Wigmore Hall.

Piemontesi was born in Locarno, in Switzerland's Italian-speaking Ticino canton, on July 7, 1983, and grew up in nearby Tenero. Showing talent as a child, he made his concert debut in 1994 and enrolled at age 15 in classes at the Lugano University of Music. He moved on to the Hannover University of Music and Drama (now the University of Music, Drama, and Media) in Germany after graduating from high school in 2002. There, he studied with Arie Vardi, and he later took lessons from <a href="spotify:artist:5vBh0nve44zwwVF5KWtCwA">Alfred Brendel</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2fxWL96h0S44PhEa9e6mtm">Alexis Weissenberg</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:4EEQIAJoeN1V30MqFFtXxB">Murray Perahia</a>. Triple breakthroughs paved the way for Piemontesi's concert career: he won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2007 and the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2009, and he was named a BBC New Generation Artist for 2009-2011. In 2010, Piemontesi made his recording debut on the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Claves%22">Claves</a> on the fourth volume of <a href="spotify:artist:2UqjDAXnDxejEyE0CzfUrZ">Schumann</a>'s complete piano works, which featured different pianists on each volume.

Since then, Piemontesi has been a fixture of symphonic seasons in Europe and the U.S., appearing as a concerto soloist with the likes of the <a href="spotify:artist:3PfJE6ebCbCHeuqO4BfNeA">London Philharmonic</a>, the <a href="spotify:artist:0SlNRZ8zBLAgyB1lsoYxAa">Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra</a>, and the <a href="spotify:artist:0jJszR81GjA87jeRq0Jgwz">Cleveland Orchestra</a>. He has given recitals at the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, and at Wigmore Hall in London, among many other venues. At Wigmore Hall, he presented a complete cycle of <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a>'s piano music beginning in 2016, and he began a similar cycle devoted to <a href="spotify:artist:2p0UyoPfYfI76PCStuXfOP">Schubert</a> in 2019. Although he often plays the music of <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a>, Beethoven, and the early Romantics, he is an enthusiastic exponent of <a href="spotify:artist:5wTAi7QkpP6kp8a54lmTOq">Brahms</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1Uff91EOsvd99rtAupatMP">Debussy</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:17hR0sYHpx7VYTMRfFUOmY">Ravel</a>, and other late Romantic and early 20th century composers as well.

Piemontesi has performed chamber music with violinist <a href="spotify:artist:6ttz1LgWFVgRiNDOjtDb2L">Renaud Capuçon</a>, clarinetist <a href="spotify:artist:7drHkRrCNABV4BkAuVF6nu">Jörg Widmann</a>, and the <a href="spotify:artist:4IBl8k6ZsBagsI5zRjyXH7">Emerson String Quartet</a>. Piemontesi is a frequent guest at festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. Since 2013, he has been the artistic director of the Settimane Musicali di Ascona, Switzerland. Piemontesi has recorded steadily through the 2010s and 2020s for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Na%C3%AFve%22">Naïve</a>, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Orfeo%22">Orfeo</a>, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Linn%22">Linn</a>, and other labels. In 2019, he issued a recording for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22PentaTone%22">PentaTone</a> of Schubert's late piano sonatas, and the following year, he joined cellist <a href="spotify:artist:3Pj3DNujNHiZMlqZiamzPS">Daniel Müller-Schott</a> for an album of the cello sonatas of Brahms. In 2020, Piemontesi issued the album Bach Nostalghia, following that up with the album Schoenberg, Messiaen, Ravel in 2021. In 2023, he released an album featuring Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and Piano Sonata in B minor. ~ James Manheim, Rovi