Biography (read more)
Gabriel Tacchino was born in Cannes on 4 August 1934. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire from 1947 to 1953, where his teachers included Jacques Février and Marguerite Long. He also studied with Francis Poulenc, the only pianist to have done so, which gave him a direct line to that composer’s piano music.
He collected prizes across the international circuit of the 1950s: first prize at the Viotti Competition in 1953, second at the Busoni in 1954, first at the Casella the same year, a joint second at Geneva in 1955 shared with Malcolm Frager, and fourth at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in 1957. He made his United States debut in 1962 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and went on to appear with major orchestras and with conductors including Karajan, Monteux and Muti, working as a soloist and as a chamber musician.
He taught at the Paris Conservatoire from 1975 to 1994, and also at the University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Schola Cantorum in Paris. He died on 29 January 2023, aged 88.
Tacchino’s standing rests on Poulenc. Having studied with the composer himself, he recorded the complete piano works for EMI, issued on five CDs in 2005, and that set is the principal reason his name is cited in connection with the repertoire. The authority of the recording is unusual in that it derives from contact with the composer rather than from an editorial tradition.
His recorded work extends well beyond it. He set down the complete piano concertos of Saint-Saëns and of Prokofiev, and recorded Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel for Erato and Pierre Verany.
His playing has been described as buoyant and well planned, a characterisation that fits the clarity the Poulenc requires. Through nearly twenty years of teaching at the Paris Conservatoire, and further posts in Tokyo, Salzburg and at the Schola Cantorum, he passed that approach to French twentieth-century piano music on to a wide range of students.
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