Jean-François Heisser

Pianist, conductor and teacher, Jean-François Heisser was born in Saint-Étienne. He studied with Vlado Perlemuter, Henriette Puig-Roget and Maria Curcio, and in 1973 left the Conservatoire de Paris with first prizes in piano, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, accompaniment and chamber music. He went on to win First Prize at the Vianna da Motta Competition in Lisbon and at the Jaén International Piano Competition in Spain.

As a soloist he has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Orchestre National de France and Les Siècles, under conductors including Zubin Mehta, Marek Janowski, Michael Tilson Thomas, Myung-Whun Chung, Leif Segerstam, Emmanuel Krivine and François-Xavier Roth. In 2001 he played Brahms’s First Piano Concerto at Evgeny Svetlanov’s farewell concert, and he has directed the Orchestre National de France from the keyboard in Mozart.

From 2000 to 2025 he was music director of the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle-Aquitaine, with which he recorded the five Beethoven piano concertos, directing from the keyboard. He was artistic director of the Ravel Academy and Festival from 1998 to 2023 and has led the season of the Méjan in Arles and the Orangerie de Sceaux Festival.

He has a particular affinity for Beethoven, including the sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, for Brahms and Chopin, for the Spanish repertoire of Albéniz, Falla, Granados and Mompou, and for French composers past and present. A committed advocate of twentieth-century and contemporary music, he has performed Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Des Canyons aux étoiles under Mehta, Janowski and Segerstam, Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke, Mantra and Kontakte, and given the first performances of piano concertos by Gilbert Amy and Nguyen Thien Dao and of three works by Philippe Manoury: La Ville, Veränderungen and Terra Ignota.

His discography numbers more than forty recordings. His complete piano works of Paul Dukas received a Diapason d’Or of the year. He has recorded for Erato, including six albums of Spanish repertoire, for Naïve and Praga Digitals, and now records mainly for Mirare and Les Musicales Actes Sud. Recent releases include the Beethoven piano concertos, Stockhausen’s Mantra with Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, and Ravel l’Alchimiste with the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle-Aquitaine. He also recorded the soundtrack of Louis Malle’s film Au revoir les enfants.

He taught at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris from 1991 to 2016; his students included Bertrand Chamayou and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, with whom he maintains a close musical relationship. He is an Officier des Arts et des Lettres.