An Evening with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 7:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours 30 minutes, including 2 intermissions
Maurice Ravel is one of the most creative, detailed, and skilled composers in history. In the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet we find talent in a similar vein: a musician of inexhaustible imagination, drive, and virtuosity. Bavouzet brings to CMS a great pianistic feat dedicated to Ravel’s complete major works for solo piano. This recital will go down in Lincoln Center history as a landmark artistic achievement.
Program
Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Sérénade grotesque for Piano
(c. 1893)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Menuet antique for Piano
(1895)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Pavane pour une infante défunte for Piano
(1899)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Jeux d'eau for Piano
(1901)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Gaspard de la nuit for Piano
(1908)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Minuet sur le nom d'Haydn for Piano
(1909)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Valses nobles et sentimentales for Piano
(1911-12)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)À la manière de Chabrier for Piano
(1912-13)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)À la manière de Borodine for Piano
(1912-13)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Prélude for Piano
(1913)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Le tombeau de Couperin for Piano
(1914-17)Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others.
Recent performances include the San Francisco Symphony, Aspen Festival, and Seattle, NHK and BBC symphony orchestras. He also appeared at the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philhar-monique de Monte-Carlo and Kazuki Yamada, BBC Proms performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicholas Collon, Carnegie Hall, as part of a major North American tour together with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski, as well as hr-Sinfonieorchester under Juraj Valčuha, Les Siécles and François-Xavier Roth which included concerts at London’s Royal Festival Hall and the Granada Festival.
Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s piano concertos and embarked on a series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed. His complete Prokofiev piano concertos with BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda won the Concerto category of the 2014 Gramophone Awards. Other recordings include the complete Beethoven Sonatas, Bartók’s Piano Concerto’s with the BBC Philharmonic and Noseda, and Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo under Yan-Pascal Tortelier. Also with Tortelier, Bavouzet’s recording of the Ravel Piano concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra won both a Gramophone and BBC Magazine award. Bavouzet’s recordings have garnered other Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’année. Ongoing recording projects include the Haydn Piano Sonata cycles.
Bavouzet has worked closely with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana and Bruno Mantovani and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music.