Biography (read more)
France Clidat was born in Nantes on 22 November 1932. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Lazare Lévy, Maurice Hewitt, Roland-Manuel, Norbert Dufourcq and Robert Siohan, taking a first prize in piano in 1950 at the age of eighteen. She later worked with Emil Gilels and Lélia Gousseau.
She appeared with orchestra very early: at fifteen, in 1948, she played Henri Sauguet’s Concerto in A minor in Geneva under Ernest Ansermet. In September 1956 she won the Franz Liszt Prize at the Budapest international competition, a prize that had not been awarded since 1937.
She taught at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and gave master classes abroad, particularly in Japan, and sat on the juries of the Viotti, Paloma O’Shea, Franz Liszt, Rhodes and Francis Poulenc competitions. She was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1976, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 1987 and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and received the Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris. She died in Paris on 17 May 2012, aged 79, and is buried at Père Lachaise.
Clidat’s name is bound to Liszt. Bernard Gavoty of Le Figaro called her Madame Liszt, and she recorded an extensive body of his piano music for Decca through the 1960s and 1970s by way of Les Éditions Vega. She also published scholarly articles on Liszt’s solo piano works, so her advocacy was editorial as well as pianistic.
The other large project in her discography is the complete piano music of Erik Satie, an unusual pairing with the Liszt and one that widened the range of French repertoire she is associated with. She also recorded Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Marcel Landowski, and from 1980 recorded for the Forlane label.
She was counted among the outstanding representatives of the French school and was described as an ambassadress of the French piano, a reputation reinforced by her teaching at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and by master classes given internationally, particularly in Japan.
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