Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

“He makes you listen to music as if you are discovering it Eureka!-style: yes, that’s what the composer must have meant.” 
- Financial Times

Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career and regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François-Xavier Roth, Charles Dutoit, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others.

Highlights during the 2017/18 season include returns to San Francisco Symphony,Seattle Symphony, NHK Symphony and BBC Symphony orchestras. Bavouzet will appear at the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and also performs with Detroit and Melbourne symphony orchestras, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Royal Scottish National and the City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras. 

Recent performances include his appearance at the BBC Proms performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon, Carnegie Hall, as part of a major North American tour together with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski, as well as concerts with Opernhaus Zürich under Gianandrea Noseda, hr-Sinfonieorchester under Juraj Valčuha, a tour with Les Siécles and François-Xavier Roth which included a concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his disc featuring the complete Prokofiev Piano Concertos with BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on a series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed. Other recordings include the complete Beethoven Sonatas, Bartók’s Piano Concerto’s with the BBC Philharmonic, and Noseda and Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo under Yan-Pascal Tortelier. Also with Tortelier, Bavouzet’s recording of the Ravel Piano concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra won both a Gramophone and BBC magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have garnered other Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’année. Ongoing recording projects include the Haydn Piano Sonata cycles. 

In recital, Bavouzet regularly performs at venues such as The Louvre in Paris and London’s Wigmore Hall and has collaborated with composer Jörg Widmann in a chamber music project at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. To mark the anniversary of Debussy’s death, Bavouzet will perform an extended recital programme of all Debussy’s works which will be presented by the Barbican Centre at Milton Court and at the 2018 Perth International Arts Festival. He will give numerous recitals throughout Europe, UK and in North America.

Bavouzet has worked closely with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana and Bruno Mantovani 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.