Catherine Collard was born at Thuir in the Pyrénées-Orientales on 11 August 1947 and entered the Paris Conservatoire at fourteen, studying with Yvonne Lefébure and Germaine Mounier. She took the first prize in piano in 1964 and in chamber music in 1966, and won prizes at the Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen competitions and from the Fondation de la Vocation. She taught at the conservatoire of Saint-Maur, and died of cancer in Paris on 10 October 1993, aged forty-six.

André Tubeuf wrote in Gramophone that she was too often placed in a line of descent from Clara Haskil when in timbre and sonority she was much closer to Yves Nat. Her discography is dominated by French music and by chamber and vocal partnership: the complete Debussy Préludes, Fauré, Ravel and Debussy songs with Nathalie Stutzmann, Satie with Anne Queffélec, who was her regular duo partner, the Franck quintet with the Quatuor Orlando and the violin sonata with Régis Pasquier, alongside three volumes of Haydn sonatas, Schumann and Schoenberg’s Op. 11. She also recorded contemporary French music by Gilbert Amy, Boucourechliev and Messiaen.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Collard
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2379910