Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi will perform at the Principal Theatre in Alicante on March 4 at 8:00 p.m., closing a tour that has taken him through multiple European countries, parts of Asia, and the United States. The program for his first Alicante appearance features works by Beethoven and Debussy. The recital is presented by the Alicante Concert Society.
Nurtured in Locarno, Switzerland, Piemontesi is widely regarded as a leading interpreter of both classical and German Romantic repertoire. He is a frequent guest with major orchestras around the world, performing in prestigious concert halls and festivals across the globe. Since 2012 he has served as artistic director of the Settimane Musicali di Ascona festival.
His expansive repertoire embraces composers from Bach and Handel to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók, Rachmaninoff, and Schoenberg, as well as Messiaen and Chin. Among his musical influences are teachers such as Arie Vardi and Alfred Brendel, but especially the French pianist Cecile Ousset, whose roots lie in the French piano tradition.
He has earned acclaimed recordings praised by critics, including late Schubert sonatas, Debussy Préludes, and Mozart piano concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Manze. His latest release for Pentatone presents two of the most demanding works in the piano repertoire: the Transcendental Studies and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.
He has collaborated with major orchestras including the Berlin and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Paris Orchestra, the Orchestra dell1 National Academy of Santa Cecilia, the RAI National Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Vienna, Chicago, Boston, London, and NHK Symphonies, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.
Regularly he works with distinguished conductors such as Gianandrea Noseda, Fabio Luisi, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti, Daniele Rustioni, Lorenzo Viotti, Robin Ticciati, Iván Fischer, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Marek Janowski, Joana Mallwitz, Thomas Søndergård, Daniel Harding, Roger Norrington, Karina Canellakis, Paavo Järvi, Zubin Mehta, Nathalie Stutzmann, Elim Chan, and Maxim Emelyanychev.
As a chamber musician he has performed with Renaud Capuçon, Tabea Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, Martha Argerich, Janine Jansen, Daniel Müller-Schott, Augustin Hadelich, and Jörg Widmann.
This season he collaborates with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich and the New York Philharmonic under Noseda; the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and the Danish National Symphony under Blomstedt; the Swedish and Finnish Radio Orchestras under Saraste and Lintu; the Wiener Symphoniker under Mallwitz; and tours with the Dresden Philharmonie led by Pablo Gonzalez and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Rhorer. He will return to the Aix-en-Provence Festival and to Schubertiade, and will give recitals at Wigmore Hall, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the Teatro di San Carlo. [Citation: Francesco Piemontesi – official biography]