Georges Pludermacher

Pianist Georges Pludermacher is recognized for his wide repertory, having emphasized adventurous contemporary works at a time when that was uncommon. He is equally active as a solo pianist, a performer of concertos, and a chamber music player.
Pludermacher was born on July 26, 1944, in Guéret, in occupied France. He took up the piano at three, and at 11, he enrolled at the Paris Conservatory. In the summers, he took courses with Géza Anda in Lucerne, Switzerland, and when he completed his studies at the Conservatory at 19, he took the school’s first prizes in piano, chamber music, and accompaniment. His career has incorporated all three of these specialties. Pludermacher’s interest in contemporary music began early in his career as he gave the world premieres of such avant-garde works as André Boucourechliev’s Archipel I and Synaphaï by Iannis Xenakis. He performed with the Ensemble Musique Vivante as well as other contemporary music groups. Pludermacher performed concertos with some of the world’s top conductors and orchestras, including Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez and the London Sinfonietta, and Christoph von Dohnányi and the National Orchestra of France. He also served for some years as a pianist with the Paris Opera Orchestra and appeared at various summer festivals around Europe. As an accompanist, Pludermacher has frequently backed instrumentalists, including violinist Nathan Milstein and violist Yuri Bashmet, and vocalists such as Ernst Haefliger, with whom he performed cycles of the songs of Schubert, Schumann, and Schoenberg.
Pludermacher has a large recording catalog. In the CD era, he has recorded mostly for Harmonia Mundi and Transart; with the latter, he issued a complete cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos with the Orchestre de Bretagne. He has remained active well into old age, and in 2020, he was one of a group of pianists heard on a Harmonia Mundi release devoted to Liszt's piano transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies. ~ James Manheim