This spring, Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns to North America for two Carnegie Hall recitals – honoring Boulez at 100 & exploring keyboard fantasy – & dates with Philadelphia Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, & OSM

(January 2025) — “A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal), Grammy-winning French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns to North America for a series of high-profile engagements this spring. He honors his late friend and mentor Pierre Boulez, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in March, with recitals in Toronto (Feb 28), Quebec City (March 10), and at New York’s Carnegie Hall (March 2). This marks the first of two spring recitals at the storied Manhattan venue, where Aimard subsequently embarks on an exploration of the keyboard fantasiaspanning four centuries of music (May 4). He also appears with three American orchestras, performing Ravel with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas (March 7–9), Bartók with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Tianyi Li (March 12 & 13), and Debussy with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen (May 8, 10, & 11). Aimard and the Finnish conductor are friends and musical partners of many years’ standing, whose recent recording of Bartók’s three piano concertos was a finalist for the 2024 International Classic Music Awards.

Honoring Boulez centennial with recitals in NYC & Canada

In the second half of the last century, Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) was arguably classical music’s most important figure. Aimard’s rich personal and professional history with the late great French avant-gardist dates back to 1976, when Boulez invited him – then just 19 years old – to become a founding member of Ensemble Intercontemporain. Aimard went on to premiere a number of major works with the IRCAM-based chamber orchestra, including Boulez’s own Répons, and his subsequent collaborations with the composer-conductor include multiple recordings, of which one was recognized with a Grammy nomination. Reflecting, shortly before the composer’s death, on Boulez as both mentor and composer, Aimard recalled: “Almost every rehearsal was a music lesson, a way to discover a piece, little by little. … He likes to put interpreters at the border of what’s possible and what is not. If you like that, it’s incredibly exciting.”

Owing in part to their close rapport, Aimard has long been one of the foremost exponents of Boulez’s music. To commemorate the centennial, he revisits three of the composer’s major works for solo piano, playing the First and Third Piano Sonatas and 12 Notations at recitals in Toronto’s Koerner Hall (Feb 28), Quebec City’s Club musical de Québec (March 10), and New York’s Carnegie Hall, where he intersperses them with Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, and selections from Bartók’s Mikrokosmos in the venue’s Zankel Hall (March 2). It was after hearing the pianist perform Boulez’s First Piano Sonata at Zankel Hall ten years ago that The New York Times observed:

“The music unfolds in organic gestures, all fits and starts and stops. Yet Mr. Aimard drew captivating lyricism from the music as well. A gesture would begin with clanking clusters and splintering lines, then trail off into delicate curlicues with crucial lingering notes.”

Indeed, as the San Francisco Chronicle has noted, Aimard has the rare ability to “make a listener rethink notions of dissonance, complexity and rhetorical directness. He excels in music where these concerns are paramount.”

Return to Carnegie Hall for keyboard fantasy recital

Later this spring, Aimard returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall to deconstruct the keyboard fantasy, a genre whose improvisatory roots let its composers’ imaginations run free, in a recital of Sweelinck, Beethoven, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Ives, and Carter (May 4). After one of the pianist’s previous explorations of the fantasia form, The San Diego Union-Tribune marveled: “There have been few piano recitals this season so thoughtfully curated as the one that Pierre-Laurent Aimard gave. … A fascinating, unforgettable concert.”

Concerts with Philadelphia Orchestra, OSM, & LA Philharmonic

The first of Aimard’s North American concerto engagements is with The Philadelphia Orchestra, with which he gives three performances of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand under Michael Tilson Thomas (March 7–9). Written for concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I, the work is one to which Aimard regularly returns; as the UK’s Independent writes, “It is hard to imagine a pianist better qualified to play works by Ravel.”

Next, Aimard joins Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) for Bartók’s Third and final Piano Concerto, in concerts that mark his first collaboration with Chinese-born New Zealander Tianyi Li, former Assistant Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony (March 12 & 13). Released last year by Pentatone, the pianist’s award-nominated Bartók concerto cycle scored a five-star review in the UK’s Sunday Times, which called the set “revelatory,” while veteran Radio 3 critic Rob Cowan confided: “This for me is the best set of Bartók piano concertos we’ve had in a very long while.”

Aimard recorded his celebrated Bartók cycle with Esa-Pekka Salonen, with whom he enjoys a close and longstanding artistic partnership. Later this spring, on a program that also features his accounts of three of the Boulez Notations for solo piano, the two musicians reunite for Debussy’s seldom-programmed Fantaisie with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (May 8, 10, & 11).

See Aimard perform Debussy’s Fantaisie with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: upcoming engagements

Jan 24
Frankfurt, Germany
Alte Oper Frankfurt
HR Symphony Orchestra / Cornelius Meister
BOULEZ: Notations (version for piano and orchestra)
RAVEL: Miroirs for solo piano

Jan 29
Oxford, UK
Recital
Details TBC

Jan 30
Manchester, UK
The Bridgewater Hall
BACH: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II

Feb 1 & 2
UK concerts with Philharmonia Orchestra / Manfred Honeck
   Feb 1: Basingstoke, UK (The Anvil)
   Feb 2: London, UK (Royal Festival Hall)
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3

Feb 9
Lyon, France
Auditorium Orchestre National de Lyon
Solo recital
BEETHOVEN: Selected Bagatelles
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
BERG: Piano Sonata, Op. 1
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
BOULEZ: Incises for piano
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit

Feb 14
Budapest, Hungary
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Concerto Budapest / András Keller
DVOŘÁK: Piano Concerto

Feb 15
Budapest, Hungary
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Chamber concert
BARTÓK: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2
SCHOENBERG: Chamber Symphony No. 1
BRAHMS: Piano Quintet in F minor

Feb 20
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Muziekgebouw
Helmut LACHENMANN: Cradle-Music for solo piano
Helmut LACHENMANN: Allegro Sostenuto (with Mark Simpson, clarinet; Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello)

Feb 28
Toronto, Canada
Koerner Hall
Solo recital
BEETHOVEN: Bagatelles, Op. 33 & 119
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
SCHOENBERG: Six Little Piano Pieces
WEBERN: Variations for Piano
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
DEBUSSY: Études Nos. 3, 7, & 11
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 3

March 2
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall)
BARTÓK: Selections from Mikrokosmos
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
SCHOENBERG: Five Pieces
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 3

March 7–9
Philadelphia, PA
Marian Anderson Hall
The Philadelphia Orchestra / Michael Tilson Thomas
RAVEL: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

March 10
Quebec City, Canada
Club Musical de Québec
Solo recital
BEETHOVEN: Selected Bagatelles
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
BERG: Piano Sonata, Op. 1
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
SCHOENBERG: Six Little Piano Pieces
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit

March 12 & 13
Montreal, Canada
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal / Tianyi Li
BARTÓK: Piano Concerto No. 3

March 17
Frankfurt, Germany
Alte Oper Frankfurt
Solo recital
Works by SCHUBERT, BEETHOVEN, SCHUMANN, SCHOENBERG, and György KURTÁG.

March 21
Siena, Italy
Fondazione Accademia Musicale Chigiana
Solo recital
BEETHOVEN: Selected Bagatelles
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
BERG: Piano Sonata, Op. 1
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
BOULEZ: Incises for piano
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit

March 26
Vienna, Austria
Musikverein
Celebration of BOULEZ at 100

March 27
London, UK
Southbank Centre (Queen Elizabeth Hall)
“Pierre-Laurent Aimard & Mathieu Amalric: Ravel”
With Mathieu Amalric, speaker
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit; Selection from Miroirs; Le tombeau de Couperin; and other works, interspersed with readings

March 29
Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig Gewandhaus
Duo recital with Tamara Stefanovich, piano
BARTÓK: Piano Sonata
DEBUSSY: Études Nos. 3 & 11
BOULEZ: Structures, Book 2 for two pianos
MESSIAEN: Vision de l’Amen

March 31
Madrid, Spain
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Solo recital
Works by BOULEZ & RAVEL

April 6
Paris, France
“Pierre-Laurent Aimard & Mathieu Amalric: Ravel”
With Mathieu Amalric, speaker
RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit; Selection from Miroirs; Le tombeau de Couperin; and other works, interspersed with readings

April 24 & 25
Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig Gewandhaus
Gewandhausorchester / Petr Popelka
BOULEZ: Éclat for 15 instruments
RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G

April 28 & 29
Brescia, Italy
Brescia & Bergamo International Festival
Slovenian Philharmonic / Kakhi Solomnishvili
RAVEL: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

May 1 & 2
Zurich, Switzerland
Kirche Fraumünster

   May 1
Duo recital with Tamara Stefanovich, piano
BACH: Aria variata alla maniera italiana, BWV 989
BACH: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 889
BACH: Prelude and Fugue in E, BWV 878
BACH: Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor, BWV 891
MESSIAEN: Visions de l’Amen

   May 2
MESSIAEN: Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus

May 4
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
Solo recital
SWEELINCK: Echo Fantasia No. 4
CARTER: Night Fantasies
CHOPIN: Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat
MOZART: Fantasia in C minor
C.P.E. BACH: Keyboard Fantasia in C
BEETHOVEN: Fantasia in G minor
IVES: The Celestial Railroad

May 8, 10, & 11
Los Angeles, CA
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic / Esa-Pekka Salonen
BOULEZ: Nos. 2, 4, & 7 from 12 Notations for solo piano
DEBUSSY: Fantaisie for piano and orchestra