Michel Dalberto entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen, studying piano with Vlado Perlemuter and Raymond Trouard. He obtained his premier prix in 1972 and studied chamber music with Jean Hubeau. Dalberto continued his studies at the piano with Perlemuter and also received coaching from Nikita Magaloff until 1975. That same year he won the Clara Haskil Competition and the Mozart Competition in Salzburg, and three years later won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. This led to major engagements throughout the world, including his Paris debut with Erich Leinsdorf in 1980. Dalberto has since performed with Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit and Wolfgang Sawallisch and taken part in many of the major festivals including Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Grange de Meslay and Montreux. Having first performed in Japan in 1984, Dalberto likes to return there every year.

Dalberto enjoys playing chamber music and has performed with Henryk Szeryng, Augustin Dumay and Viktoria Mullova. More recently he has worked with Dmitry Sitkovetsky and Boris Belkin (with whom he has recorded the Brahms violin sonatas), and singers Barbara Hendricks and Jessye Norman. Each summer he performs at the Academy of Music Summer Festival at Les Arcs in Savoie, of which he was appointed director in 1991; and he has succeeded Nikita Magaloff as chairman of the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition. For his services to music, in 1996 Dalberto was awarded L’Ordre National du Mérite by the French government.

In 1980, Dalberto’s first solo disc of Schubert sonatas won the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros. Further discs for Erato include works by Brahms and Schumann (Fantasie Op. 17 and Kreisleriana Op. 16) recorded in the 1980s. In the 1990s Dalberto recorded for the Denon label, producing some discs of works with orchestra including Grieg’s Piano Concerto Op.16 and Franck’s Variations Symphoniques with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Jean-Bernard Pommier. This is Grieg delivered with French elegance and charm, although The Gramophone thought his ‘…unfailingly thoughtful and skillful playing does not reveal anything special about the work in the way that a few classic performances do.’ A live Schumann Piano Concerto Op. 54 with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Eliahu Inbal could be described in a similar fashion.

Apart from some discs of Mozart and Liszt, and the Brahms violin sonatas with Boris Belkin, Dalberto’s main project with Denon was to record the complete works for piano by Schubert. A reviewer stated, ‘Yet all the way through I missed the spontaneity and immediacy brought to the work by many of Dalberto’s distinguished rivals in the CD catalogue. So often I had the impression that studio correctness was taking precedence over live, personal communication.’ More recently Dalberto has recorded for RCA/BMG. Debussy’s first book of Images and first book of préludes was made in 1998 and a disc of Mozart concertos with John Nelson conducting the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris was issued in 2001; but they appear at present to be available only in France.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).