Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with The Cleveland, NHK Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras and collaborates with many renowned conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, Vasily Petrenko, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, Louis Langrée, and Sir Andrew Davis.

Orchestral engagements during the 2024/25 season include Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrucken and Royal Northern Sinfonia amongst others. He continues his relationship with the Manchester Camerata performing and recording the final instalment of the Mozart concertos which will include K365 and K242 for two and three pianos respectively, conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy. Jean-Efflam will tour to New Zealand and Australia appearing with the Auckland Philharmonic and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras as well as recitals in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra.

Elsewhere in recital, Bavouzet visits Wigmore Hall in November for the final instalment in the 12-concert series entitled Tour de Debussy. He returns to Wigmore Hall in May, with a concert consisting of a unique programme showcasing every solo piano work written by Maurice Ravel. He will also be performing this programme on tour in Italy and the United States. Other notable recitals include Shanghai Symphony Hall and Prague Piano Festival.

Bavouzet’s previous notable performances include Carnegie Hall with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, a BBC Proms appearance with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Nicholas Collon and a successful eight-concert tour of China with Philharmonia and Lan Shui. He has recently appeared with Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, play-directed a three concerto programme with Seattle Symphony Orchestra and toured the Baltics with Manchester Camerata. Bavouzet is a frequent guest of Verbier Festival. In summer 2023, Bavouzet’s recital tour took him from International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Bravo! Vail Festival and Aspen, across the Atlantic to Finland’s Mänttä Music Festival and St Ursanne in Switzerland.

Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos. His most recent release, A Musical Tribute to Pierre Sancan with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier, won the Gramophone Editor’s Choice and Diapason d’Or awards. His complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series has been named a modern benchmark by Gramophone and The Beethoven Connection received numerous accolades from magazines including the New York Times, BBC Music Magazine and Choc-Classica. Ongoing cycles include the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, the fourth volume of which was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2020. In September of the same year, the complete Beethoven Concertos were released with Swedish Chamber Orchestra play-directed by Bavouzet.

Other recordings include Bartók’s Piano Concerti and the complete Prokofiev Piano Concerti with BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda – the latter won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Under Yan-Pascal Tortelier, he recorded Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Ravel Piano concerti with BBC Symphony Orchestra which won both a Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have also garnered Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’Année awards.

Bavouzet has worked closely with Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltan Kocsis, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bruno Mantovani and Jörg Widmann 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 and an Advisory Board member of the Pianofest in the Hamptons. In 2012 he was ICMA Artist of the Year and in 2008 he was awarded Beijing’s first ever Elite Prize for his Beethoven complete sonata series.