Jean-Yves Thibaudet

During the 1990s, Jean-Yves Thibaudet brought style and elegance to his recordings of core piano repertoire and excursions into the jazz worlds of Bill Evans and Duke Ellington. Born in Lyon in 1961, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Aldo Ciccolini. In many ways, Thibaubet is a typically French pianist, with the implied characteristics of fast fingers, light touch, and transparent textures. French repertoire lies at the core of his recorded catalog, and his Ravel and Debussy, with their blend of grace and scintillating brilliance, are among the finest things he has committed to disc. Overall, his playing is refined rather than opulent. His 1993 album of Liszt transcriptions showcases a dazzling technique with unflappable dexterity and control, but reveals a firmly contained temperament, while his cultured accounts of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos with Ashkenazy are hugely admirable but operate at a low emotional voltage. His versatility has seen him explore popular byways (such as Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto, 1941), alongside Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948) and songs by Wolf and Liszt with mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender (Mörike-Lieder, 1993).