Details of the evening:

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Date: Friday, February 20th 2026

Time: start at 6:00 PM

Location: Salon Hergé– Villars Palace

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is renowned for his exceptional virtuosity and his subtle, insightful interpretations of the piano repertoire. He studied with Pierre Sancan at the Paris Conservatoire and was discovered in 1995 by Sir Georg Solti, who launched his international career and with whom he maintained a close artistic relationship until Solti’s death in 1997.

Since then, he has performed with leading orchestras including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, working with eminent conductors such as Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, Vasily Petrenko, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, and Louis Langrée. His recital appearances have taken him to the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and London’s Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms. He is also a regular guest at the Verbier Festival, Bravo! Vail, and the La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival.

More recently, he has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Shanghai, São Paulo, Adelaide, Sydney, Tokyo Metropolitan and BBC Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Manchester Camerata. He has also directed, from the keyboard, a program of three concertos with the Seattle Symphony.

Throughout his career, he has collaborated with iconic figures such as Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltán Kocsis, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bruno Mantovani, and Jörg Widmann. In chamber music, he has performed with Steven Isserlis, the Danel Quartet, James Ehnes, and the Ensemble Orsino. A passionate advocate of French composers, he also champions lesser-known works, notably those of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard.

An exclusive Chandos artist, his recordings span works by Bartók, Prokofiev, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, and have received numerous awards, including Diapason d’Or, Choc de l’Année, and Gramophone Awards. His complete recording of Haydn’s piano sonatas has been hailed by Gramophone as a contemporary benchmark. His complete Prokofiev piano concertos with the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda won the “Concerto” category at the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Under the direction of Yan Pascal Tortelier, he recorded the complete works for piano and orchestra by Stravinsky, as well as Ravel’s piano concertos, earning both a Gramophone Award and a BBC Music Magazine Award. His album Pierre Sancan: A Musical Tribute, recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier, was widely acclaimed and received a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and a Diapason d’Or. His most recent release, devoted to the complete works of Ravel and released by Chandos in spring 2025, has met with great success.

In recognition of his contribution to music, he was named Artist of the Year by the International Classical Music Awards in 2012. He also holds the International Chair of Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music and serves on the advisory board of Pianofest in the Hamptons.

During the 2025/2026 season, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet appears in recital on four continents, with performances at the City Recital Hall in Sydney, the Frankfurter Hof in Mainz, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Kyoto Concert Hall, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, the Queen Silvia Concert Hall in Stockholm, the Wiener Konzerthaus, and Lincoln Center in New York. To mark the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel in 2025, he performs the complete piano works of the composer in an international recital tour.

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Ticket soon available