Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata & Gábor Takás-Nagy
Biography Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata & Gábor Takás-Nagy
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others.
Highlights during the 2018/19 season include the Lincoln Center in New York with the London Philharmonic under Edward Gardner, Orchestre national de Lyon, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, a Debussy focus with the Antwerp Symphony, his continuing collaboration with Manchester Camerata including an extensive tour of China as well as performances with Sapporo Symphony, Seoul and Taiwan philharmonic orchestras. Following his highly successful extended Debussy recital at the Barbican’s Milton Court and the 2018 Perth International Arts Festival, Jean-Efflam will present this programme at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. Other recitals include a return to the Louvre, Wigmore Hall – both in solo recital and in collaboration with Kristóf Baráti and István Várdai, as well as a number of recitals in the U.K., Germany and Belgium. He will also return to the Verbier Festival in 2019.
Recent performances include the San Francisco Symphony, Aspen Festival, and Seattle, NHK and BBC symphony orchestras. He also appeared at the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and Kazuki Yamada, BBC Proms performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon, Carnegie Hall, as part of a major North American tour together with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski, as well as hr-Sinfonieorchester under Juraj Valčuha, Les Siécles and François-Xavier Roth which included concerts at London’s Royal Festival Hall and the Granada Festival.
Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on a series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed. His complete Prokofiev Piano Concertos with BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Other recordings include the complete Beethoven Sonatas, Bartók’s Piano Concerto’s with the BBC Philharmonic and Noseda, and Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo under Yan-Pascal Tortelier. Also with Tortelier, Bavouzet’s recording of the Ravel Piano concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra won both a Gramophone and BBC magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have garnered other Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’année. Ongoing recording projects include the Haydn Piano Sonata cycles.
Bavouzet has worked closely with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana and Bruno Mantovani and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Gábor Takács-Nagy
began studying the violin at the age of eight. As a student of the Franz Liszt Academy, he won First Prize in 1979 in the Jeno Hubay Violin Competition and later pursued studies with Nathan Milstein. From 1975 to 1992, he was founding member and leader of the acclaimed Takács Quartet performing with legendary artists, Lord Menuhin, Sir Georg Solti, Isaac Stern and Mstislav Rostropovitch. In 1996 he founded the Takács Piano Trio and made world-premiere recordings of works of Hungarian composers Franz Liszt, Lászlo Lajtha and Sandor Veress. Gábor Takács-Nagy is considered one of today’s most authentic exponents of Hungarian music, and in particular, that of Béla Bartok. In March 2017 he was awarded the prestigious Béla Bartok-Ditta Pasztory Prize. In 1998 he established the Mikrokosmos string quartet with compatriots Zoltan Tuska, Sandor Papp and Miklos Perényi. In 2002, following in a long-line of Hungarian musical tradition, Gábor Takács-Nagy turned to conducting . In 2006 he became the Music Director of the Weinberger Kammerorchestra and in August 2007, the Music Director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. From 2010 until 2012 he was Music Director of the MAV Symphony Orchestra Budapest and since September 2011 , Music Director of Manchester Camerata. In September 2012 he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra . From 2013 to 2018 he was Principal Artistic Partner of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. He is regularly invited to conduct the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestra Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, the Orchestra Filarmonica de Bologna, l’Orchestre de l’Opéra de Toulon, the Malaysian Philharmonic, the Calgary Philharmonic, the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra , the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of Dijon-Bourgogne, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne , the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra amongst others. Gábor Takács-Nagy is also a dedicated and highly sought-after chamber-music teacher. He is Professor of String Quartet at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva. In June 2012 he was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London and in February 2021 received the prestigious Artist of Merit award from the Hungarian Governement.
