Pierre-Laurent Aimard is not only one of the key figures in the music of our times, but also continually sheds new light on music of the past. In the 2024/25 season he has celebrated Ravel’s 150th birthday with orchestras including the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. He has also celebrated the 100th birthday of his teacher and friend Pierre Boulez in performances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has given concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Vienna Musikverein, in Lyon, Madrid and Baden-Baden. In addition, he performed Peter Eötvös’s piano concerto Cziffra Psodia with the Berlin Philharmonic and continued his collaborations with Tamara Stefanovich and the actor Mathieu Amalric. He gave the premieres of two works by Mark Andre at the Donaueschingen Festival and a piano piece for four hands by George Benjamin — with the composer as his co-performer — at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.
Among the leading composers with whom he has worked are Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Marco Stroppa. In 2024 he gave the world premiere of Clara Iannotta’s Piano Concerto at the Eight Bridges Festival in Cologne.
Following Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (2018, awarded the German Record Critics’ Award), Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and ‘Eroica’ Variations (2021), Visions de l’Amen (2022) with Tamara Stefanovich and Bartók’s complete piano concertos with the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen (2023), he released the BBC Music Magazine Award-winning album Schubert: Ländler with Pentatone in 2024.
An innovative curator, he has directed and performed in a number of residencies, including for Musikkollegium Winterthur, was artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 2009 to 2015 and relaunched the online resource ‘Explore the Score’ with the Ruhr Piano Festival, exploring the piano works of György Ligeti.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and has won numerous awards, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2017 and Denmark’s Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2022.
