Idil Biret

Turkish pianist Idil Biret is a fixture of the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Naxos%22">Naxos</a> catalog and its completist enterprises, having recorded the collected piano works of <a href="spotify:artist:7y97mc3bZRFXzT2szRM4L4">Chopin</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:5wTAi7QkpP6kp8a54lmTOq">Brahms</a> for the label. Between 1994 and 2008, she recorded a cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas for her own <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22IBA%22">IBA</a> (Idil Biret Archives) label. She has appeared with most of the world's major orchestras and presented recitals in many countries, with a notable high point being a complete performance of <a href="spotify:artist:1385hLNbrnbCJGokfH2ac2">Liszt</a>'s brutally difficult transcriptions of Beethoven's nine symphonies at the 1986 Montpellier Festival in France. Studio performances of those transcriptions were recorded for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22EMI%22">EMI</a> and released on the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22IBA%22">IBA</a> label. Biret was, in short, one of the world's top-rank pianists, not a star whose name was familiar even to casual listeners, but a versatile performer whose capabilities were well known to enthusiasts.

Born November 21, 1941, in Ankara, Turkey, Biret was a classic child prodigy. Turks called her the Turkish <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a>, and when she was eight the financially strapped Turkish Parliament voted a special appropriation to make possible her musical education in Europe. Hypersensitive to music as a baby, she gained the ability to hear a tune and reproduce it on the piano when she was only two. She had an uncanny ability to learn music in her mind without practicing it at the keyboard, delivering it perfectly formed to the amazement of onlookers. Biret's first teacher in France was the famed pedagogue <a href="spotify:artist:1vfC2bld90kx966JTCSwf7">Nadia Boulanger</a>, under whose tutelage she blazed through the curriculum at the Paris Conservatory. She took three first prizes there at 15 and began her professional career the following year. Biret later studied with German pianist <a href="spotify:artist:4F0h097DbL1XBqIbDw2xOj">Wilhelm Kempff</a>, who called her his favorite disciple.

One major event of her early career was a series of concerts she gave in Moscow in 1960, organized by Russian pianist <a href="spotify:artist:21h8E3aA7a9mjcUHbLpjxf">Emil Gilels</a>. She would go on to play over 100 concerts in Russia. In 1963 Biret made her U.S. debut with the <a href="spotify:artist:0K23lQ2hSQAlxSEeZ05bjI">Boston Symphony</a> in Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, a trademark work in her repertoire. However, in addition to her <a href="spotify:artist:7y97mc3bZRFXzT2szRM4L4">Chopin</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:5wTAi7QkpP6kp8a54lmTOq">Brahms</a> cycles, Biret was known for performing and recording contemporary music. She recorded extremely adventurous music for composer <a href="spotify:artist:7rM5G4gKtS2FN45XBljyu8">Ilhan Mimaroglu</a>'s label <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Finnadar%22">Finnadar</a> in the 1970s, and her 1995 <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Naxos%22">Naxos</a> disc of <a href="spotify:artist:2prZJWfQMnIgwUKxKcBxH7">Pierre Boulez</a>'s three sonatas won France's Golden Diapason award.