The Italian-Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi, originally from Locarno, has earned a reputation over the years as one of the leading interpreters of the German classical and romantic repertoire. He appears as a regular guest with many of the most important international orchestras, in concert halls and music festivals around the world, while being firmly anchored on the shores of Lake Maggiore as Conductor artistic director of the Ascona Music Festival Settimane Musicali.

With his fine but fascinating interpretations of Franz Schubert's Sonatas for piano , as well as solo works and Concertos for piano by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt, he has been internationally acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. His interpretative style is characterized by sensitivity, intimacy and poetry, but also power and brilliance. For Francesco Piemontesi it is especially important to illuminate the scores from within: 'Making music is like a second language for me. It feels like an existential necessity. I don't want to entertain the audience, I want to make them participate in the deeper dimensions of music.'

Francesco Piemontesi 's extensive repertoire includes works by Bach and Händel in original versions and transcriptions, Concertos for piano by Ravel, Debussy, Bartók, Rachmaninov and Schoenberg, as well as works by Olivier Messiaen and Unsuk Chin. Among his many and most important musical influences are his distinguished teachers Arie Vardi and Alfred Brendel and, in particular, French pianist Cecile Ousset. It is to her that Francesco Piemontesi owes his 'round' sound and a 'somnambulistic' technique rooted in the French piano tradition dating back as far as Marcel Ciampi.

Francesco Piemontesi 's musical prowess is documented in numerous recordings that have received awards and critical acclaim, such as Schubert's latest Sonatas for piano , Debussy's Preludes, and Mozart's Concertos for piano with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze. His latest publication (Pentatone) is devoted to two of the most challenging pieces in the piano literature: the Transcendental Etudes and Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor.

Francesco Piemontesi collaborations with fellow musicians or orchestras arise from the fundamental core of friendship, appreciation and creativity. He was recently Artist in Residence with theOrchestre de la Suisse Romande, Filarmonica della Scala in Dresden and the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad. A long-standing relationship binds him to the Schubertiade Festival and Wigmore Hall in London: having already completed concert cycles there with the complete works for piano by Schubert and Mozart, he will perform Beethoven's Sonatas for piano beginning in 2025. Completely at ease in smaller chamber ensembles as well, Francesco Piemontesi appears with a variety of partners including Renaud Capuçon, Tabea Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, Martha Argerich, Janine Jansen, Daniel Müller-Schott, Augustin Hadelich and Jörg Widmann.

As a soloist, he has played alongside such major orchestras as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Los Angeles Philharmonich, theOrchestre de Paris, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in Munich, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Symphony Orchestras of Chicago, Boston, London and NHK Tokyo, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Tonhalle-Orchester in Zurich . Francesco Piemontesi He regularly collaborates with distinguished conductors such as Gianandrea Noseda, Fabio Luisi, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti, Daniele Rustioni, Lorenzo Viotti, Robin Ticciati, Ivan Fischer, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Marek Janowski, Joana Mallwitz, Thomas Søndergård, Daniel Harding, Roger Norrington, Karina Canellakis, Paavo Järvi, Zubin Mehta, Nathalie Stutzmann, Elim Chan and Maxim Emelyanychev.

Francesco Piemontesi travels worldwide and has performed at many prestigious venues, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York and theElbphilharmonie in Hamburg. He has also appeared as a guest at major festivals such as Salzburg, Edinburgh, Aix-en-Provence, Lucerne, Verbier and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as at La Roque d'Anthéron, 'Mostly Mozart' in New York, Klavierfestival Ruhr and BBC Prom.

Highlights of the 2023/24 season include collaborations with Zurich's Tonhalle-Orchester and Filarmonica della Scala in New York conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, the Swedish and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Hannu Lintu , the Wiener Symphoniker conducted by Joana Mallwitz and touring with Filarmonica della Scala in Dresden conducted by Pablo Gonzales and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. Francesco Piemontesi He will return to the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Schubertiade and play recitals at London's Wigmore Hall, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.