Biography (read more)
Little of Agnès Gillieron’s early life is on the record. The French Wikipedia article, the only encyclopedic source that covers her, gives neither a birth date nor a birthplace. It records that she began studying the piano at eight and took her licence at the École normale de musique de Paris. She then trained as a harpsichordist with Huguette Dreyfus, Ruggero Gerlin and Rafael Puyana, and took a first prize at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris. She afterwards discovered the fortepiano through Jörg Demus, and that instrument became the centre of her work. She was awarded the Prix de la Fondation de la vocation. In 2011 she formed the Duo Stellato with the flautist Franck Passabet de Labiste. She lives at Plouguiel in the Côtes-d’Armor.
http://patachonf.free.fr/musique/scarlatti/discographie.php?p=gillieron_calliope
http://duo-stellato.wifeo.com/le-duo.php
Gillieron belongs to the generation of French keyboard players who moved from the modern piano to the harpsichord and then to the fortepiano, and her repertoire follows that trajectory: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Scarlatti and Chopin, played on reconstructed historical instruments. She gives concert-lectures on the fortepiano, presenting the instrument itself as part of the subject.
Her best-documented recordings are on the Calliope label: sonatas by Clementi op. 34 no. 2, op. 40 no. 2 and op. 41 (1983), Haydn’s sonatas nos. 38, 53 and 62 (recorded October 1981) and fourteen Scarlatti sonatas (recorded June 1985). A critical assessment does exist: reviewing her Calliope Scarlatti, one notice calls her an excellent interpreter of the composer, praising her sober use of the fortepiano’s resources. Her discography is also wider than the Calliope titles alone — a complete Mozart fantasias and sonatas is recorded among her later work.
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