Hélène Rose Paule Grimaud was born on 7 November 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, France, and discovered the piano at seven. She entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1982 to study with Jacques Rouvier, winning first prize there and the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros in 1985 for her recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She went on to study with György Sándor and Leon Fleisher, gave a well-received Tokyo debut in 1987, and was invited by Daniel Barenboim to perform with the Orchestre de Paris that same year. She debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado in 1995 and the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 1999, and has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002. Alongside her performing career she founded the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, has published four books, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.

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Grimaud is celebrated for a fiercely personal, risk-taking approach to interpretation, with critics comparing her willingness to rethink familiar scores to Glenn Gould. Her acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov have shaped how audiences hear this repertoire, while her simultaneous career as a wildlife conservationist and author has brought unusual public visibility to a concert pianist beyond the traditional classical-music audience.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Grimaud
• https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/helenegrimaud