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Pierre Hantaï

Pierre Hantaï

Harpsichord

Pierre Hantaï was born in 1964 into a family of artists. It was the encounter with the music of Bach that was to determine his further path.

The harpsichord recordings of Gustav Leonhardt played an important role here. Hantaï undertook his initial musical steps at the age of ten. He played a great deal of chamber music with his brothers. He at first taught himself (on a small spinet) the repertoire that interested him, and later took lessons with the American harpsichordist Arthur Haas. Ultimately, he was invited by Gustav Leonhardt to participate in his lessons in Amsterdam for two years. He was still very young when he collaborated with the authoritative personalities of the small world of early music, with the Kuijken brothers, Gustav Leonhardt, Philippe Herreweghe, and Jordi Savall.
He became known to a wider audience with his recordings of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a work that he has since played over a hundred times throughout the world. He has often performed and recorded the Elizabethan repertoire (Bull, Byrd, Farnaby), as well as Bach and Couperin, and has devoted himself profoundly to the works of Domenico Scarlatti, which he has already recorded numerous times and that he wants to make even more familiar to audiences. Today he gladly joins together with his musical friends on the concert stage, with Jordi Savall, his brothers Marc and Jérôme Hantaï, flutist Hugo Reyne, violinist Amandine Beyer, harpsichordists Skip Sempé, Olivier Fortin, Aapo Häkkinen, and Maude Gratton.
Pierre Hantaï’s recordings for various labels (Adda, Astrée-Auvidis, Opus 111, Virgin, Mirare) have been honored with numerous prizes by the critics, including the Gramophone Award, Grand Prix du Disque, Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, and the Diapason d’Or de l’année. He has given master classes for various academies. He directs his instrumental ensemble Le Concert Français and has likewise been invited to conduct various chamber orchestras.

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