Biography (read more)
Reine Gianoli was born in Paris on 13 March 1915. Her training brought her into contact with an unusually broad range of teachers: she studied with Lazare Lévy, Alfred Cortot, Yves Nat and Edwin Fischer, drawing on both the French school and the Austro-German tradition.
She appeared with major orchestras and conductors including Paul Paray, Felix Weingartner and Hermann Scherchen, and performed regularly at festivals such as Strasbourg and Lucerne, where her collaborators included Pablo Casals and Georges Enescu.
Teaching occupied much of her working life. In 1947 she joined the École Normale de Musique de Paris as a piano instructor, and in 1977 moved to the Conservatoire de Paris. A short documentary film about her, running thirteen minutes, was made in 1967 by Marcel Bluwal and Claude Ventura. She died in Paris on 21 February 1979, aged 63.
Gianoli’s recorded legacy centres on complete surveys. She set down the complete piano works of Robert Schumann and Haydn’s complete trios, and recorded Mozart’s piano sonatas live between 1947 and 1955 for the Westminster, BAM and Adès labels — an unusual undertaking for the period, and the body of work by which she is now best known.
Her training put her at a crossing point between traditions. Having worked with Lazare Lévy, Cortot, Yves Nat and Edwin Fischer, she carried both French and Austro-German approaches into her playing and her teaching, and her festival appearances alongside Casals and Enescu placed her among the chamber musicians of that circle.
Through three decades at the École Normale de Musique and a final period at the Paris Conservatoire she taught a wide range of musicians, among them the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the composer André Boucourechliev.
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