“A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal),
Pierre-Laurent Aimard is widely acclaimed as an authority on the music of our time, while also being recognized for shedding new light on the music of the past. His international schedule of creatively conceived concerts, broadcasts, and recordings is complemented by a lifelong commitment to teaching, giving lectures and concert workshops around the world.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard has had close collaborations with many leading composers, including Helmut Lachenmann, Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle, György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Marco Stroppa, Pierre Boulez, and Olivier Messiaen. During the 2023/24 season, he celebrates the music of György Ligeti with projects throughout Europe, North America, Japan, and China. Solo appearances include the Czech Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Orchestre National de France, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. Aimard’s extensive recital tour includes London’s Southbank Centre, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Vienna’s Musikverein, Luxembourg’s Philharmonie, and the Concertgebouw, as well as Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. At the Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris, he collaborates with French actor Denis Podalydès to explore Fateless with music by Ligeti, Kurtag, Schoenberg, and Cage. Aimard also continues his association with long-standing chamber music collaborators, especially Tamara Stefanovich at the Tonhalle Zürich and the National Music Broadcasting Center in Madrid, and jazz pianist Michael Wollny at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt.
Upcoming world premieres include Clara Iannotta’s Piano Concerto for the Acht Brucken Festival in Cologne and the Portuguese premiere of Klaus Ospald’s Se da contra las piedras la libertad, a work co-commissioned by Casa da Musica, Porto, and the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne. Aimard’s past premieres include Carter’s last piece, Epigrams; Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s works, Responses; Sweet disorder and the carefully careless and Keyboard Engine for two pianos.
The season begins with the September release of a new recording of the complete Bartók piano concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. This disc is the latest in a series of critically acclaimed collaborations with Pentatone, following Visions de l’Amen (2022) recorded with Tamara Stefanovich; Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Eroica Variations (2021), and Messiaen’s magnum opus, Catalogue d’oiseaux (2018), which received multiple awards, including the prestigious German music critics’ award “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.”
An innovative curator and significant interpreter of the piano repertoire of all eras, Aimard has been invited to lead and perform in numerous residencies, including most recently that of Musikkollegium Winterthur, where during the season he celebrated different composers and opened with the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos. Elsewhere, he has undertaken innovative projects at the Casa da Musica in Porto, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Tanglewood Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, and as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 2009 to 2016.
Aimard is the winner of many awards, including the prestigious Ernst von Siemens International Music Prize in 2017 in recognition of a life dedicated to the service of music and the Leonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s most distinguished music award, in 2022.
A member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Aimard has held professorships at the Hochschule Köln and was formerly an associate professor at the Collège de France in Paris. In the spring of 2020, he relaunched a major online resource, Explore the Score, in collaboration with the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, which focuses on the interpretation and teaching of Ligeti’s piano music.