Pascal Amoyel

Biography

Pascal Amoyel was born in 1971. He began piano lessons at the age of ten but only decided to devote himself to a career as a concert artist some time later, after obtaining a scientific baccalauréat. He came to the attention of György Cziffra, with whom he studied in France and Hungary, and was a pupil of Jacques Rouvier and Pascal Devoyon at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was awarded Premiers Prix in piano and chamber music. He also holds a concert diploma from the Paris École Normale de Musique and awards from the Yehudi Menuhin and György Cziffra Foundations. His first prize in the Paris International Competition for Young Pianists marked the beginning of a career both in France (Salle Pleyel and Salle Gaveau in Paris) and abroad (Europe, USA, Canada, Japan…). He has played with the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National d’Île de France, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Bulgarian National Radio Orchestra, and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and has also been invited to many festivals (Menton, La Chaise-Dieu, Flâneries Musicales de Reims, Fêtes Romantiques de Nohant, Orangerie de Sceaux, Festival Chopin à Bagatelle, Festival Berlioz, Les Arcs). Since 1999 he has played duo repertoire with Emmanuelle Bertrand, with whom he has already recorded three previous CDs for harmonia mundi.
His recordings of music by Schubert, Liszt (XCP), Olivier Greif (Pianovox-Sony) and Chopin (the Nocturnes, on Calliope, awarded a Victoire de la Musique in 2005) have been warmly received by the press. His collaboration with Greif over a number of years has made Pascal Amoyel one of the major interpreters of his music: he recorded the Sonate de Guerre under the composer’s supervision. Their meeting and subsequent relationship have also been the subject of a television documentary.
Pascal Amoyel is a professor at the Conservatoire National Régional in Rueil-Malmaison, and also composes. In 1999 he founded the ‘Juniors Festival’ (European Festival of Childhood and the Arts), in which the main participants are children; in September 2000 he received the ‘Premier Prix Ars-Deux Magots’, awarded to ‘a musician with qualities of openness and generosity’.