One of the most brilliant artists of the French school, Jean-Claude Pennetier has enjoyed a rich and varied musical trajectory (contemporary music, the fortepiano, conducting, chamber music, music theatre, composition, teaching), but his privileged field of expression is as a solo pianist and recitalist.
After training at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, he distinguished himself in the foremost international competitions – First Prize in the Gabriel Fauré Competition, Second Prize in the Marguerite Long Competition, Most Distinguished Candidate at the Geneva Competition, First Prize in the Montreal Competition – before embarking on a splendid and highly individual career.
With performances widely described as ‘dazzling’, ‘masterly’, and ‘spellbinding’, Jean- Claude Pennetier is one of today’s leading interpreters. He appears with such internationally renowned orchestras as the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the NHK Orchestra (Tokyo), the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano), the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine. He is a frequent guest at prestigious concert halls and festivals, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Salle Pleyel, the Festival de la Roque d’Anthéron, Lille Piano(s) Festival, Chopin à Bagatelle, the Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, the George Enescu Festival, the Seattle Festival, Moscow Nights, and La Folle Journée in Nantes, Tokyo, Bilbao and Warsaw. Jean-Claude Pennetier appears regularly in the United States and Canada.
His recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Debussy (for Lyrinx) have received the highest distinctions from the musical press. Among his more recent recordings are the chamber music of Ravel and two Mozart CDs with Michel Portal and members of the Ysaÿe Quartet.
The year 2009 saw the appearance of the first volume of Jean-Claude Pennetier’s complete recording of the piano works of Fauré. This was followed in 2010 by a double album of Schubert and in 2013 by Liszt’s Via Crucis and works for solo piano. All three of these Mirare releases won the Diapason d’Or. Following the second and third volumes of his complete Fauré cycle, Mirare issued a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos K467 and K491 with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Christoph Poppen in 2017.
