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İdil Biret (born November 21, 1941 in Ankara, Turkey) is a Turkish pianist of classical music.
Biret was educated at the Paris Conservatory in France under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger and graduated with three prizes at the age of 15. She accomplished her education with Alfred Cortot, and was a lifelong disciple of Wilhelm Kempff.
Since her age of 16, Biret played in the most important international concert halls with orchestras including the London Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of France and the Sydney Symphony. She collaborated with the eminent conductors such as Hermann Scherchen, Pierre Monteux, Eric Leinsdorf, Rudolf Kempe, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Aaron Copland, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Charles Mackerras, Jean Fournet, Moshe Atzmon and Hiroyuki Iwaki. Biret gave also concerts at the festivals of Berlin (Germany), Montreal (Canada), Istanbul, Dubrovnik (Croatia), Montpellier (France), Nohant (France), Royan (France) and Athens (Greece). She played Beethoven’s sonatas with Yehudi Menuhin conducting and Mozart’s concerto for two pianos with Wilhelm Kempff.
Biret received following awards: the Lily Boulanger Memorial Prize in Boston (USA), the Harriet Cohen / Dinu Lipatti Gold Medal in London (UK) the Polish Prize for Artistic Merits, the National Knight Merit Order of France, the Adelaide Ristori Prize, Italy.
She was jury member at several piano competitions: Van Cliburn (USA), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Montreal (Canada), Liszt (Weimar, Germany) and Busoni (Italy).
The numerous recordings of Biret’s interpretations, more than 70 until 1997, are spanning the world premiere recording of the nine Beethoven symphonies in transcriptions by Liszt for EMI (6LP/1986), complete solo piano works and the concerto works of Chopin (15CD/1992), Brahms (12CD/1997), Rachmaninoff (10CD/2000) and the three piano sonatas of Boulez (1995) for Naxos as well as the piano works and editions of Wilhelm Kempff (1991) for Marco Polo. In 1995, Biret’s recordings of Chopin’s entire works was awarded the “Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin” in Poland. The same year, she won the “Diapason d’Or” prize in France for her recording of Boulez’ sonatas, which was selected among the best recordings of the year by the newspaper Le Monde. Idil Biret recorded also the studies (volume 1 and 2) of György Ligeti and the piano transcription of Strawinsky’s ballet music the Firebird for Naxos, which were released in 2003.
Idil Biret played the complete piano works of Beethoven and Brahms. In the 1980s, she performed the 32 sonatas of Beethoven and the piano transcription of the 9 symphonies by Liszt in two series of concerts. In the 1990s, she played in five concerts Beethoven’s five piano concertos, the
Choral Phantasia and the Triple Concerto. In 1997, Biret played in Germany all the solo piano works of Brahms in five consecutive recitals during the composer’s centennial anniversary. The same year, she performed also two piano concertos of Brahms at one concert.
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