Jean-Efflam Bavouzet‘s busy career includes recent performances with the Boston Symphony, the Berliner Sinfonie Orchester, and the The London Philharmonic, with which he will perform Prokofiev in Royal Festival Hall in October 2004.

His recent CD releases include the complete keyboard works of Debussy, and the complete keyboard works of Ravel. Both of these CDs have been honored with the “Choc” award from Le Monde de la Musique. And the Ravel issue was just named “Best recording of the month” in Stereo.

Of his recent performances of the Messiaen Reveil des Oiseaux with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Globe wrote: “The young French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, made his debut
. His imaginative, accurate, and beautiful playing honored his impressive pedigree…”

Indeed Bavouzet has been honored by distinguished juries and musicians of our time, from the Young Concert Artists award to the personal invitation of Sir Georg Solti to perform the Bartok Third Piano Concerto with L’Orchestre de Paris in Paris and on tour. These concerts were conducted by Pierre Boulez

. Mr. Bavouzet has been re-engaged with the orchestra for an unprecedented project featuring all five Prokofief concerti in a three week program.

Characterized by critics and audiences as mercurial, elegant, dynamic and poetic, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet performs with leading international orchestras, among them the Gurzenich Orchestra of Cologne, the Bournemouth Symphony, Hallé Orchestra/Manchester, Weimar Staatskapelle, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, and Symphony National de Belgique. In February 2002 he made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Ingo Metzmacher
. In April 2003 he appeared with the Berliner Sinfonie Orchester, under the baton of Jean-Claude Casadesus. He returned to the Orchestre de Paris to work again with Pierre Boulez in October 2003
.

After hearing him, Sir George Solti invited Jean-Efflam Bavouzet to perform Bartok’s Third Concerto with him and the Orchestre de Paris in Paris/Salle Pleyel and Rome/Santa Cecilia in January 1998. After Solti’s death, Pierre Boulez conducted these concerts to exceptional critical acclaim. Bavouzet has appeared with the finest ensembles of his native France, including the Orchestre National de France with Charles Dutoit at the Stresa and Merano Festivals, Orchestre de Capitol de Toulouse, Orchestre de l’Ile-de-France, and the National Philharmonic Orchestras of Lyon, Metz and Nancy. Conductors with whom Mr. Bavouzet has collaborated include George A. Albrecht, Yutaka Sado, Marek Janowski, Armin Jordan, Leonid Grin, Jorge Mester, Kobayashi Ken-Ichiro, Emmanuel Krivine, Andrew Litton, Kent Nagano, Michel Plasson, Youri Simonov, David Atherton, Pavel Kogan, and Mark Ermler. He is frequent guest at European and American festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron, Théatre des Champs-Elysées Sunday Morning Series, La Folle journée/Nantes, Chopin Festival Paris, Piano aux Jacobins, Schleswig-Holstein, Ruhr Klavierfestival, Badenweiler Musiktage, Harrogate, Kalamazoo, American Spoleto, Mainly Mozart, Bard Festival, Yokohama, Sakharov, and Sarov.

He made his North American debut in 1986 under the auspices of Young Concert Artists, and has since been touring throughout the United States and Canada, including appearances at New York’s 92nd Street Y and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Among his many recordings are Haydn and Schumann recitals for Harmonic Records. The Haydn won the “Choc” Award by Le Monde de la Musique in 1992, and the Schumann CD was voted one of the Best Recordings of the Year by Le Monde in 1994. The world premiere of the complete Ohana Etudes was released by Harmonic Records in 1998, and received the Choc du Monde de la Musique in 1999. He has also recorded the Debussy Etudes and an all-Chopin CD for the Japanese label Pony Canyon Classics. His new collaboration with MDG (Germany) will begin with the complete solo piano works of Maurice Ravel, scheduled for release in 2003.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, portrettfoto by Henning Høholt, copyright reserved

His musical tastes are eclectic and distinctive. His concerto repertoire includes all the concerti of Bartok, Beethoven and Prokofiev. In November 1999 he performed the complete Prokofiev piano concerti in two nights with the Nizhni Novgorod Philharmonic in Russia. This season he is touring with the complete solo works of Ravel in one recital, and is one of the featured artists in The 32 Beethoven Sonatas cycle being performed throughout France

. His recitals often include contemporary repertoire by Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen and Ohana.

Renowned pianist Zoltan Kocsis recently joined Bavouzet for the premiere of Bavouzet’s own transcription of Debussy’s Jeux for two pianos; the two pianists played regularly in duo recitals throughout Europe between 1995 and 2000. Bavouzet’s transcription of Jeux is to be published by Durand.

In 1999 he was named Professor for Life in the Piano Department of the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold, Germany.