Cédric Pescia

Pianist Cédric Pescia has recorded subtle interpretations of keyboard repertoire from Couperin to Messiaen. He has also been active as a chamber musician and as a coach for singers of lieder. Pescia was born in 1976 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and took up the piano at age seven. He enrolled at the Lausanne Conservatory, studying with Christian Favre, and then moved to the Geneva Conservatory, where his teacher was Dominique Merlet. At both these schools, Pescia took top prizes. He completed his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts under Klaus Hellwig. Pescia took master classes from Daniel Barenboim, Irwin Gage, and Christian Zacharias, among others, and, during several seasons at the International Piano Academy on Italy's Lake Como, Leon Fleisher, Andreas Staier, and Fou Ts'ong. Pescia also took chamber music coaching from the Alban Berg Quartet. A major prize breakthrough for Pescia was a win at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City in 2002. Beginning ambitiously with a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on the Claves label in 2005, Pescia has continued to record for that label and, at times, for Aeon. Pescia has toured the U.S., South America, China, and North Africa, as well as Europe. Among his major appearances as a soloist have been those with the Utah Symphony, the Orchestre Nationale de Lille, the Camerata Bern, and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. He has given recitals at the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Salzburg Mozarteum, and London's Wigmore Hall. Pescia has been a frequent guest at major European festivals. He has recorded an ongoing cycle of piano works by Robert Schumann, and in 2017, his recording of violin sonatas by Ernest Bloch, with his frequent duet partner Nurit Stark, appeared on Claves. Signed to the La Dolce Volta label, Pescia issued a recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and in 2020, he was heard with pianist Philippe Cassard on a recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, transcribed by Liszt for two pianos. In 2022, he joined Cassard and soprano Natalie Dessay on the album Mozart à l'opéra. Pescia often gives master classes and, since 2012, has been a professor of piano at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva. ~ James Manheim, Rovi