A career of already over 15 years, award-winning Naïve recordings, international concert appearances – Lise de la Salle has established herself as one of today’s exciting young artists and 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.”
Highlights of 2021/22 include her debut at Paris Philharmonie with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under Lars Vogt, debut with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Lionel Bringuier whom whom she will join again alongside the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra later in April 2022, as well as performances with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Fabio Luisi, Belgium National Orchestra and Stanislas Kochanovsky, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Thomas Søndergård on tour.
She has played with many leading orchestras across the globe: from the USA (Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta Symphony Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra), to the UK (London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), across Europe in Germany (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Dresden Staatskapelle, WDR Sinfoniorchester Köln, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt), through her native France (Orchestre National de France and Lyon), also performing in Italy (Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della RAI di Torino), further afield with Rotterdam Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic, and in Asia (NHK and Singapore Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan) among many others, and collaborated with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Fabio Luisi, James Conlon, Krzysztof Urbanski, Antonio Pappano, Rafael Payare, Karina Kanellakis, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Lioner Bringuier, Fabien Gabel, Marek Janowski, Robin Ticciati, Osmö Vanska, James Gaffigan, Semyon Bychkov, and Dennis Russell Davies.
She performs in the world’s most esteemed concert halls – 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, Hollywood Bowl, and festivals – Klavier Festival Ruhr and Bad Kissingen, Verbier, La Roque d’Anthéron, Bucharest Enescu Festival, San Francisco Performances, Chicago Symphony recital series, Aspen and Ravinia Festivals… In 2014 she becomes the first Artist-in-Residence of the Zurich Opera and performs in New York in the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center with Vienna Symphony.
She also takes pleasure in educational outreach and conducts master classes in many of the cities in which she performs.
Among her critically acclaimed Naïve CDs features an all-Chopin disc with a live recording of the Piano Concerto 2, Op. 21 with Fabio Luisi conducting Staatskapelle Dresden. In May 2011, Naïve issued her sixth recording, released in celebration of Liszt’s Bicentennial. The album received Diapason Magazine’s Diapason d’Or and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, which stated “…the wonderfully gifted 23-year-old Lise de la Salle gives us a Liszt recital of astonishing strength, poetry, and, for one so young, musical maturity.” Her two latest recordings are released in 2018: Bach Unlimited for the first one – a Bach-focused album with Naïve including the Italian Concerto, Liszt’s Fantasy & Fugue on the Theme B.A.C.H. and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, and Paris-Moscow for the second – recorded with French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca, the album offers a celebration of the musical relationship between Paris and Moscow (Sony Classical). She records Chausson Concert with Daniel Hope and the Züchner Kammerorchester (Deutsche Grammophon) in 2020. Her last album (2021) When do we Dance? presents an odyssey of dances through a whole century.
Born in Cherbourg (France) in 1988, Lise de la Salle started the piano at age four and gave her first concert 5 years later in a live broadcast on Radio France. She studied at Paris Conservatoire and made her concerto debut at 13 with Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in Avignon, her Paris recital debut at the Louvre before going on tour with Orchestre National d’Ile de France, playing Haydn’s Concerto in D Major. She has worked closely with Pascal Nemirovski and was long-term advisee of Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux.
In 2004, Lise de la Salle 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, Lise de la Salle won First Prize and the Bärenreiter Award. She has also won First Prize in many French piano competitions.
