Hélène Mercier

The pianist Hélène Mercier was born in Montreal and appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician at European and North American concert halls, including the Salle Pleyel and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Konzerthaus, Flagey in Brussels, the Sala Verdi in Milan and the Megaron Hall in Athens. She has collaborated with orchestras such as the Orchestra Sinfonia Nazionale della Rai, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic, under renowned conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa and Trevor Pinnock. Alongside numerous appearances at French festivals, she has performed at the Dresden Music Festival, at Echterlive in Luxembourg and at the piano festivals of Brescia and Bergamo.

Career highlights have included performances with Mstislav Rostropovich and Beethoven’s Triple Concert with Salvatore Accardo, Natalia Gutman and the Orchestre de Paris under Semyon Bychkov.

As a chamber musician she has performed with the Leipzig String Quartet, the Gewandhaus Quartet, the Moscow Virtuosi, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Henri Demarquette, Augustin Dumay, Laurent Korcia, Julian Rachlin, Truls Mørk and Kian Soltani among others, along with fellow pianists including Khatia Buniatishvili.

She maintains a close professional partnership with Louis Lortie, with whom she has so far released seven much-praised albums, including works by Vaughan Williams (Diapason d’Or) and in 2022 the album Debussy: Piano Duets — the first in a series of recordings of the composer’s complete works for piano duet / two pianos. Her discography also includes works by Chausson with Vladimir Spivakov (Choc de Classica), Brahms waltzes and dances with Cyprien Katsaris and an album with Alain Lefèvre dedicated to André Mathieu. Most recently she released the album Lost to the World with Daniel Lozakovich in March 2026 for Warner Classics.

At the age of 15, Hélène Mercier joined Dieter Weber’s class at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York and the Paris Conservatoire, and perfected her chamber music ensemble skills with Gidon Kremer and Henryk Szeryng.

She is a prize-winner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition, among others, has been named ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone magazine and was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.