Lise de la Salle – FRANCE
With more than 15 years of award-winning Naïve recordings and international concert appearances, Lise de la Salle has established herself as a musician of real 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.”
Ms. de la Salle has played with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. She made her London Symphony Orchestra debut with Fabio Luisi, which initiated a long-term association: he invited her to be the first artist-in-residence at the Zurich Opera (2014), featured her regularly with the Vienna Symphony—including a performance in New York in the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center—and collaborated with her to record the complete works of Rachmaninov for piano and orchestra. She has also appeared with the most prominent orchestras in the United States (Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia), across Europe (BBC, London, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich, Paris, Rotterdam), and Asia (NHK, Singapore, Tokyo Metropolitan), working with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Fabio Luisi, James Conlon, Gianandrea Noseda, Krzysztof Urbanski, Antonio Pappano, Rafael Payare, Karina Kanellakis, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Osmö Vanska, Fabien Gabel, James Gaffigan, and Semyon Bychkov.
Recital tours have taken her to esteemed halls—including the Vienna Musikverein, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Herkulessaal in Munich, Berlin Philharmonie, Tonhalle Zurich, Lucerne KKL, Bozar in Brussels, Wigmore and Royal Festival Halls, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and the Hollywood Bowl—and most prestigious festivals. She also takes pleasure in educational outreach and conducts masterclasses in many of the cities in which she performs.
She has released 10 critically acclaimed recordings with Naïve, including an all-Chopin disc with a live recording of the Second Piano Concerto with Fabio Luisi and the Staatskapelle Dresden; a Liszt album for his Bicentennial, which received the Diapason d’Or and was named Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice; and Bach Unlimited, a Bach-focused album also featuring Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on a theme of B.A.C.H and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne. Her latest solo album (2021), When do we Dance?, presents an odyssey of dances through a whole century.
Ms. de la Salle started the piano at age 4 and gave her first concert five years later in a live broadcast on Radio France. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 11, and at 13, made her concerto debut in Avignon, followed by her Paris recital debut at the Louvre, and went on tour with the Orchestre National d’Ile de France. She has worked closely with Pierre Réach, Bruno Rigutto, and Pascal Nemirovski, and was long-term advisee of Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux.
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, D.C. debuts. At the Ettlingen International Competition in Germany, she won First Prize and the Bärenreiter Award. She has also won First Prize in many French piano competitions.