The Ticino-born pianist Francesco Piemontesi’s sensitivity and poetry, expressiveness and brilliance, combined with exceptional technical skill, make him one of the most exciting musicians of our time. He has an international reputation as one of the leading interpreters of the entire piano repertory, from the Baroque period to contemporary music. As a soloist he performs with leading orchestras around the globe, and frequently appears at international festivals such as the BBC Proms and the Salzburg Festival.
The 2025/26 season has included the world premiere of Beat Furrer’s Second Piano Concerto (dedicated to him) with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as performances with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Swedish and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Baltimore and Toronto and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has worked with outstanding conductors such as Karina Canellakis, Elim Chan, Maxim Emelyanychev, Iván Fischer, Daniele Gatti, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Marek Janowski, Fabio Luisi, Joana Mallwitz, Zubin Mehta, Gianandrea Noseda, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Rustioni, Robin Ticciati, Thomas Søndergård, Nathalie Stutzmann and Lorenzo Viotti.
Equally at home on the big stage and in chamber music, he performs regularly with musical partners such as Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Müller-Schott and Jörg Widmann.
He is an exclusive artist for the Petantone label, for which he has recorded works by Liszt, Schoenberg, Messiaen, Ravel, Bach and Schubert. In 2025 he began to focus on Brahms, with a recording of the Second Piano Concerto and the op. 117 Intermezzi under Manfred Honeck.
In 2024 he worked with the director Jan Schmidt-Garre on the documentary film Die Alchemie des Klaviers (The Alchemy of the Piano), which explores individual approaches to the instrument, its sound quality and its form as explored by some of the most important pianists of our time.
Francesco Piemontesi’s most important musical influences include his teachers Arie Vardi and Alfred Brendel, and the French concert pianist Cécile Ousset.
