The young French pianist Lise de la Salle's new project is one of the event releases of the Chopin bi-centenary year, a recording which couples the famous Four Ballades for solo piano with a live performance of the Second Piano Concerto, performed with one of the best orchestras of the time, the Staatskapelle Dresden, under its former principal conductor Fabio Luisi.
In 2007 the Staatskapelle Dresden was awarded ‘Prize of the European Culture Foundation of the Word’s Musical Heritage’ - the only orchestra in the world ever to have been so honoured. In December 2008, it was selected, as so often in the past, as one of the world's top ten orchestras - this time by Gramophone. The British magazine has also been fulsome in its praise of the pianist: “Lise de la Salle is a talent in a million.”
Lise de la Salle, born in 1988, began studying the piano aged four, gave her first concert at nine, and made her debut with orchestra in Beethoven’s Second Concerto at 13. Since 2001 she has pursued an international career that has taken her to such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Hollywood Bowl, Metropolitan Art Space in Tokyo, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Wigmore Hall in London.
At the age of 14, her first recording (Ravel, Rachmaninov) marked the start of her collaboration with Naïve. In 2004, her second album (Bach, Liszt) was named CD of the Month by Gramophone. This was followed in 2007 by a third CD, the First Concertos of Shostakovich, Liszt, and Prokofiev with Lawrence Foster and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, which won the same distinction in Gramophone. In 2008 came a double album of Mozart and Prokofiev featuring a DVD (Lise de la Salle, Majeure!) directed by Jean-Philippe Perrot, which was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine Choice.
