Nicholas Angelich

Pianist Nicholas Angelich spent much of his career in France. He recorded for Harmonia Mundi and Erato, recording muscular, charismatic takes on Romantic repertory standards. Angelich was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 14, 1970. He began studying the piano at five, with his mother as his teacher, and two years later, he had progressed to a point where he could perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467. A prodigy in the making, Angelich enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris at 13 and studied with the most prestigious teachers the school had to offer, including Aldo Ciccolini and Yvonne Loriod. He took master classes with Maria João Pires and Leon Fleisher, who bestowed upon him a Young Talent Award at the Ruhr International Piano Festival. Other major prizes included a second prize at the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition in Cleveland, Ohio (1989), and first prize at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition (1994). In North America, Angelich appeared with the Utah Symphony under Thierry Fischer, the San Antonio Symphony under Sebastian Lang-Lessing, and the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, among others. Angelich made his recording debut in 1995 with an album of Rachmaninov piano music on the Harmonia Mundi label. He recorded mostly for Virgin, in solidly Romantic-virtuoso repertory, in the 2000s decade. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2009 under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, rejoining that conductor at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. In France, he appeared at many major halls. Angelich was also active as a chamber musician, performing and recording with the violin-cello pair of Renaud and Gautier Capuçon. He moved to the Erato label in the early 2010s. In 2016, he released the album Dedication, presenting works by Liszt, Schumann, and Chopin that were each dedicated to one of the other composers. Many of Angelich's Brahms recordings were collected into a ten-CD box set by Erato in 2017. Angelich's recording of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, Op. 84, appeared on Erato in 2021, by which time his catalog contained some 20 recordings. Angelich died somewhat unexpectedly on April 18, 2022, from a chronic lung condition that had been kept private. ~ James Manheim, Rovi