Born in 1955, Michel Dalberto started playing on a small toy at the age of 3 ½, made his first public appearance at 5 ½ and entered the class of Vlado Perlemuter at the Paris Conservatoire at 13. Today he is regarded as the heir of the great French Piano School of Alfred Cortot. He won in 1975 the most coveted Clara Haskil Prize and 1st Prize at the 1978 Leeds International Piano Competition.
Conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallish, Sir Colin Davis, Erich Leinsdorf, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Masur, Daniele Gatti or Sir John Elliot Gardiner have invited him and he also appeared at the Lucerne, Florence, Aix-en-Provence, La Roque d’Anthéron, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Schleswig-Holstein festivals, among others. From the beginning, his repertoire was mostly focused on the Austrian-German music of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, particularly Schubert and Mozart. He is the only living pianist who has recorded the complete piano music by Franz Schubert. He has also conducted from the keyboard all Mozart Concertos.
More recently he started playing the French composers of the second half of the 21th and beginning of the 20th century, releasing for the label Aparté four recordings devoted to Debussy, Franck, Fauré and Ravel. He played the ten Beethoven Sonatas with the late Henryk Szeryng and has been since regarded as an outstanding chamber music partner sharing the stage with musicians such as Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Boris Belkin, Vadim Repin, Renaud Capuçon, Yuri Bashmet, Truls Mork, Lynn Harrell as well as, in the vocal department, Barbara Hendricks, Jessye Norman, Nathalie Stutzman or Stephan Genz.
Erato has published a box of 16 CDs. Titled “The making of a musician”, it includes all his early Brahms, Schubert or Schumann recordings from the late 70’s and the 80’s to the more recent releases of the chamber music by Fauré with Renaud Capuçon & the Ebène Quartet. For his new label, La Dolce Volta, Michel Dalberto has recorded some Piano Sonata by Beethoven, produced by the serie Piano a Lyon.
He has been appointed Professor at the Paris Conservatoire in September 2011 and gives regular masterclasses in China as well as in many other countries. The French government awarded him the Ordre National du Mérite in 1996. Fine cuisine & wine are among his favorite occupations. He is also an excellent skier, a graduated scuba-diver and a passionate of car racings.
