Fou Ts’ong Remembered
François Dumont piano
Monday 17 January 2022, 7.30pm (doors open 7pm)
£30 (£15 under 25s)
£60 to include post-concert supper
For further details and booking please contact [email protected]
French pianist François Dumont’s international career has been launched by his success in major international piano competitions winning prizes in the Chopin Competition, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Clara Haskil Competition, the Montecarlo Piano Masters. He has been nominated for the Victoires de la musique, a major French classical music event. He has received the Prix de la Révélation from the Syndicate of Music Critics in France.
François Dumont has been chosen by Leonard Slatkin to play and record both Ravel concerti with the Orchestre National de Lyon. The CD will be issued for Naxos during the 2019 season.
He appears as a soloist with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra, the Montecarlo Philharmonic, the Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Orchestre national de Lorraine, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Orchestre National d’Ile-de-France, the Orquesta Nacional de Colombia, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Tokyo Symphony with conductors such as Jesùs Lopez-Cobos, Antoni Wit, Arie van Beek, Philippe Bender, Rani Calderon, David Reiland, Stefan Sanderling, Alexander Sladkovsky.
François Dumont was fourteen years old when he entered the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Bruno Rigutto’s class. He later studied at the prestigious Lieven Piano Foundation and the Lake Como International Piano Academy with artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher, Murray Perahia, William Grant Naboré, Menahem Pressler, Andreas Staier and Fou Ts’ong.
François Dumont is invited to perform recitals in major venues such as the Festival International de la Roque d’Anthéron, the Piano aux Jacobins Festival à Toulouse, Chopin Festival in Nohant, Radio-France Montpellier Festival, Chopin à Paris Bagatelle Festival, Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw, Nuits du Suquet in Cannes, Journées Ravel in Montfort l’Amaury, Ljubljana Festival, Kennedy Center in Washington. He regularly tours Japan, South Korea and China.
His chambers music partners are Tabea Zimmerman, Augustin Dumay, Henri Demarquette , Xavier Philipps, the Prazak, Sine Nomine, Talich, Zemlinsky, Voce and Debussy Quartets. With Virginie Constant and Philippe Aïche, his is part of the Trio Élégiaque, which whom he recorded the complete Beethoven and Schubert Trios.
His first solo recordings, the Complete Mozart Sonatas (Anima Records) and a Chopin album (Artalinna) both received the “Maestro” award of the “Pianiste” magazine. Other solo recordings include a Wagner/Liszt programme (Piano Classics) as well as a double CD live that includes all his performances at the Chopin Competition, published by the National Chopin Institute in Warsaw. His recording of the complete piano music of Maurice Ravel (Piano Classics) has received both critic (FFF Telerama, 5 Diapason) and public acclaim. Two B.A.C.H. project have been released by Artalinna, of which the famous critic Jacques Drillon wrote : « coherence, dignity, richness of affects. One thinks of Edwin Fisher ». His recent recording of Mozart Concerti K.271 and K.466 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne have been praised for their “clarity of elocution”, their “ideal sense of equilibrium” and “delightful classicism”.
His collaboration with the OSB continues with Mozart Concerti K.453 and K.488 which he has recorded live, conducting from the keyboard. The project was taken to Salle Gaveau, Paris, where it met public and critic acclaim. His 2018 allbum featuring the complete Chopin Nocturnes was praised by the BBC magazine for his « singing tone » and the International Piano Magazine considers that it is « a stunning new version that sets him apart », while the American magazine Fanfare writes : «There are few recent recordings to compare with this one. »