Elsa Grether & David Lively
Biography Elsa Grether & David Lively
Elsa Grether
French violinist Elsa Grether is regularly invited to prestigious festivals and venues in France and abroad. As a soloist with orchestra, she has played concertos from Bach to Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Tomasi among others, with the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, Orchestre National de Cannes, Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, Briansk Symphony Orchestra, Indiana Philharmonic, Deutsch-Tschechicher Chamber Orchestra…
She has given recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall in New-York, Folle Journée de Nantes, Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, Flâneries Musicales de Reims, Menton Festival, Festival de Sully et du Loiret, Festival de Rocamadour, Festival des Forêts, Festival des Abbayes en Lorraine, Festival de Musique sacrée de Perpignan, Festival Berlioz, Grandes Heures de Cluny, Pâques à l’Abbaye de Fontevraud, Musicales de Normandie, Festival d’Arténétra, Festival Lille Clef de Soleil, Salle Cortot, Invalides and Petit Palais in Paris, Bozar and Flagey in Brussels, Radio Suisse Romande and Festival Musiques en Eté in Geneva, Altmark Festspiele, Ido Festival Düsseldorf, Palazzetto Bru-Zane in Venice…
Her recent and coming engagements in 2022/23 include a debut recital at the Berlin Philharmonie, Sibelius Violin Concerto with François-Xavier Roth and La Jeune Symphonie de l’Aisne, return invitations with the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse under Jacques Lacombe in Tomasi Violin Concerto, recitals in Flagey Brussels, Paris Invalides, Paris Petit Palais, Salle Cortot, Arsenal de Metz, Montauban, Avignon, Mulhouse, Orléans, Reims, Liège (Belgium), KonzertGut Concert Series (Germany), Festival des Abbayes de Lorraine, Festival de la Lucerne, Escapades Musicales d’Arcachon, Festival Stras’Orgues.
David Lively
French-American pianist David Lively has a passionate attachment to the artistic legacies of France and the United States that makes him a performer of choice for the music of both countries.
In 1969, at the age of 16, he left his native United States for France to study at the École normale de musique with Jules Gentil (formerly Alfred Cortot’s assistant). He went on to study with Wilhelm Kempff, Eugene Istomin, Nadia Boulanger, Erich Leinsdorf and, above all, Claudio Arrau. With his dazzling technique and musical intensity, he quickly won a number of international prizes, including the Concours International Marguerite Long, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Geneva International Music Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition, where he was also awarded the Special Prize for contemporary music, and the Dino Ciani Prize of La Scala of Milan, winning a growing public following on each occasion.
Soon he had embarked on a multi-faceted career marked by a diversity that continues to this day. He is intimately familiar with the great repertoire with orchestra, mastering over eighty concertos and specializing in masterpieces so technically daunting that they are hardly ever performed. These include the Busoni and Furtwängler concertos, and Joseph Marx’s extremely challenging Castelli Romani – his recording of this work with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra conducted by Steven Sloane, was recently re-released under the Naxos label. In this repertoire, he has had the privilege of working with conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Ferdinand Leitner, Kurt Sanderling, Pierre Dervaux, Hans Vonk, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Jerzy Semkow, Lovro von Matačić, Walter Susskind, Michael Gielen, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Rafael Kubelik, Pascal Rophé, Dennis Russel Davies, Ronald Zollman, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Yutaka Sado, Hubert Soudant, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Michel Plasson and more.
Mr. Lively identifies particularly with twentieth-century American music, notably the works of Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter, who was a close friend. His recent recording I Got Rhythm—a CD of American composers with selections from Gottschalk, Gershwin, Joplin, Barber, Ives, Bolcom, Albright and Carter—has been a critical and popular success. Le Monde critic Pierre Gervasoni calls Mr. Lively “an inspired guide to American music,” while Thierry Hilleriteau of Le Figaro praises him as “an exceptionally gifted keyboard artist […], among the finest interpreters of the music of Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland and Charles Ives.”
His innate virtuosity makes him a champion of new music. Examples include the European premieres of Takemitsu’s Riverrun (with conductor Kent Nagano), Saariaho’s trio Cendres, Travlos’s Double Concerto (with the Moscow Radio Orchestra and Vladimir Fedosseyev), and Sébastien Gaxie’s Continuous Snapshots, dedicated to Mr. Lively and first performed at IRCAM’s ManiFeste festival. He played and recorded Benoît Mernier’s piano concerto with the Orchestre national de Montpellier-Languedoc-Roussillon, conducted by Ernest Martinez Izquierdo. He has a close relationship with Philippe Boesmans, having frequently performed the composer’s chamber music and piano concerto, and has recorded his complete works for piano solo. And thanks to a similar kinship with William Blank, he premiered Blank’s Cris concerto and more recently his concerto Reflecting Black. Written for and dedicated to Mr. Lively, Reflecting Black was commissioned by the Orchestre de la Suisse romande and recorded on the Aeon label with conductor Pascal Rophé. He recently premiered Eric Tanguy’s Quintet for Piano and Strings at the Salle Cortot.
