piano works by Claude Debussy

Des pas sur la neige
Images oubliées, lent et doux
Rêverie
Reflets dans l'eau
Arabesque n°1
La sérénade interrompue
Passepied
La fille aux cheveux de lin
Pour le piano | Prélude
Les sons et les parfums
Pour l'Egyptienne
Clair de lune

 

* The Program is subject to change.

 

ANIMATOR AND ILLUSTRATOR: GRÉGOIRE PONT
‘Grégoire Pont's remarkable work avoids easy technical effects and always sticks to the truth of text and music. Never had the meaning of 'spells' been so well embodied. The result is a masterwork where the
stage setting shows unexpected details, designed with a great sense of poetry on the screen' ClassiqueNews,L'Enfantetles sortilege s, Opéra National de Lyon An exceptional artistic talent already as a young child, Grégoire Pont attended the Animation Workshop in Paris where he studied Norman McLaren’s techniques of animation dynamics. He graduated from the Penninghen school of Graphic Arts (ESAG) in 1992 and shortly after directed his first animated film, Le concerto du chat, with abstract shapes dancing to the sounds of the Orchestre de Paris at Salle Pleyel.

 

A great lover of classical music, Pont has always been passionate about making it more popular and accessible to both children and adults by means of animation. He developed a new performance concept called ‘Cinesthetics’ where he draws and animates live to a musical performance. He has appeared at Royal Festival Hall, Paris Philharmonie, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Suntory Hall and Gothenburg Concert Hall, collaborating with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Kazushi Ono, Stéphane Denève, François-Xavier Roth and Dalia Stasevska. Recent highlights have included the premiere of Moonlight on the Eiffel Tower at Tongyeong, Peter and the Wolf at Théâtre des Champs Elysées and Our Precious Planet, a piece exploring the effects of human activity on our environment, in co-production with the Barbican Centre and Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne.

 

Pont has also received great acclaim for bringing his innovative animation techniques to the operatic repertoire. Together with British director James Bonas, he conceived productions at Opéra de Lyon of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole. Their unique approach has led to these productions being presented by houses around the world, including Dresden Opera, Opéra de Lille, Royal Opera House, Muscat, and San Francisco and Cincinnati symphony halls. Most recently they have achieved great success with titles including Hans Abrahamsen’s Snow Queen for Opéra National du Rhin, Emma Bovary for National Ballet of Canada and Candide for Welsh National Opera. This season they premiere a production of Die Zauberflöte at Göteborg Opera.

 

Pont also illustrates books for children, most notably Les Excalibrius, and has made numerous animations for TV commercials, educational animated shorts and music video clips. For three seasons, Pont worked with the French conductor François-Xavier Roth and his groundbreaking orchestra Les Siècles on Presto! (France Television). This animated series of musical works was seen by over three million viewers on weekly primetime television.

 

 

‘His grasp of Schubert’s scale and ebullience means this is among the finest recordings of one of the composer’s final sonatas.’
- The Guardian

Steven Osborne’s musical insight and integrity underpin idiomatic interpretations of varied repertoire that have won him fans around the world. The extent of his range is demonstrated by his 35 recordings for Hyperion, which have earned numerous awards, and he was made OBE for his services to music in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2022. The Observer described him as ‘a player in absolute service to the composer’.

 

A thoughtful and curious musician, he has served as Artist-in-Residence at Wigmore Hall, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Bath International Music Festival, and has written articles and talks on subjects ranging from stage fright to What does Music Mean? Osborne has a lifelong interest in jazz and often improvises in concerts, bringing this spontaneity and freedom to all his interpretations. Throughout the 24/25 and 25/26 seasons he performs a recital programme which narrates one of his personal musical journeys through works by Meredith Monk, Frederic Rzewski and his own transcriptions of Ketih Jarrett, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson as well as his own jazz improvisations.

 

Orchestral engagements in 25/26 include a tour with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Mozart) and performances with the San Diego Symphony (Beethoven), Malmö Symphony, Pacific Symphony (Lutosławski) and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at both the Royal Festival Hall (Turangalila) as well as a performance of John Rutter’s recently discovered piano concerto, Reflections (released on Decca in January). His solo recitals take him to New York, Boston, Washington and London whilst his musical partnerships continue with Paul Lewis, Alban Gerhardt and Benjamin Beilman.

 

Osborne has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Wiener Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall and Kennedy Center Washington, and is a regular guest at both Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall. He has worked with major orchestras around the globe, most recently Czech Philharmonic/Bychkov, Dresden Philharmonic/Runnicles, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic/Petrenko, Finnish Radio Symphony/Collon, Philharmonia/Rouvali and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestras.

 

He has been a Hyperion recording artist since 1998, with releases spanning Beethoven, Schubert, Ravel, Debussy, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Kapustin, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb and Feldman, and winning numerous awards around the world. His most recent addition is Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A major D959 and Moment Musicaux in 2025, which received outstanding reviews, and which The Times hailed as one of the Best Classical Albums of 2025 so far (five stars). His 2023 Debussy Études and Pour le piano, was awarded five stars by BBC Music Magazine and described as ‘full of superlatives’. His January 2023 performance of Tippett’s Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall was later released on the LPO’s own label in 2025, receiving widespread critical acclaim.

 

、Osborne was born in Scotland and studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and the Royal Northern College of Music. He is Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Patron of both the Scottish International Piano Competition and the Lammermuir Festival, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.