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Lise de la Salle

About this Artist

In just a few years, through her international concert appearances and her award‐winning Naïve recordings, 26-year‐old LISE DE LA SALLE has established a reputation as one of today’s most exciting young artists, and as a musician of uncommon sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe...the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”

A native of France, now living in Paris, De la Salle first came to international attention in 2005, at the age of 16, with a Bach/Liszt recording that was selected as Recording of the Month by Gramophone Magazine. De la Salle, who records exclusively with the label Naïve, was then similarly recognized in 2008 for her recording of Liszt’s, Prokofiev’s, and Shostakovich’s first concertos – a remarkable feat for someone only 20 years old. Her most recent recording, which offers works of Schumann, including Kinderszenen and the C-major Fantasy, was released in 2014.

Lise de la Salle has played with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. She most recently made her London Symphony Orchestra debut with Fabio Luisi, who had invited her to become the first Artist‐in‐Residence of the Zurich Opera in 2014. Together, they will perform the entire piano and orchestra works of Rachmaninoff. She has also appeared frequently with Luisi and the Vienna Symphony, including a performance in New York on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center. In this country, De la Salle has played with the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival, the San Francisco Symphony, and three times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others. In her second appearance with the Minnesota Orchestra, she played the Gershwin Concerto in F, a performance that inspired one critic to exclaim that “she might just be the most exciting young artist in classical music right now.”

During the 2014/15 season, Lise de la Salle will be heard with CZECH FIXING NEEDED Jirˇí Beˇlohlávek and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra, and on tour with Sir Neville Marriner and the Staatskapelle Weimar. In the United State she will make her fourth appearance with Vasily Petrenko and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony, Roberto Abbado and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Eugene Tzigane and the New Jersey Symphony.

A sought‐after recitalist, she has recently been presented to enthusiastic audiences and critics in major series in New York, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto, and at the Philharmonie in Berlin, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Louvre in Paris. De la Salle also takes pleasure in educational outreach and conducts master classes in many of the cities in which she performs.

Her critically acclaimed Naive CDs include an all‐Chopin disc with a live recording of the Piano Concerto No.2, with Fabio Luisi conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Four Ballades. In May 2011, Naïve issued her sixth recording, released in celebration of Liszt’s Bicentennial. The recording includes both original Liszt compositions, such as the Ballade No. 2 in B minor, Funérailles, and the “Dante” Sonata, and Liszt’s transcriptions of others’ pieces, such as Mozart’s Lacrymosa and Schubert’s Ständchen. Diapason Magazine awarded the album the “Diapason D’or,” and it was the Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, noting that “...the wonderfully gifted 23‐year‐old Lise de la Salle gives us a Liszt recital of astonishing strength, poetry, and, for one so young, musical maturity.”

Born in Cherbourg, France in 1988, De la Salle was surrounded by music from her earliest childhood.  She began studying the piano at the age of four and gave her first concert at nine in a live broadcast on Radio‐France. When she was eleven, De la Salle received special permission to enter the Paris Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique to study with Pierre Réach. At 13, she made her concerto debut with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Avignon and her Paris recital debut at the Louvre before going on tour with the Orchestre National d’Ile de France playing Haydn’s Concerto in D major. De la Salle graduated in 2001 and subsequently enrolled in the postgraduate cycle with Bruno Rigutto. Since 1997, she has worked closely with Pascal Nemirovski, and also studied with Genevieve Joy‐Dutilleux.

In 2003, Lise de la Salle won the European Young Concert Artists Auditions in Paris and in 2004 she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. Later that year, the organization presented both her New York and Washington, DC debuts. At the Ettlingen International Competition in Germany, De la Salle won First Prize and the Bärenreiter Award. She has also won First Prize in many French piano competitions, including the Steinway, Sucy, Vulaines, and Radio‐France Competitions. In 2003, she won the “Groupe Banque Populaire Natexis” Prize, for which she received a three‐year scholarship.

For more information, please visit lisedelasalle.com.