Vassilakis, Dimitri

Greek pianist born in Athens in 1967, he began his musical studies in his native city at the age of seven. He subsequently became a pupil of Gérard Frémy at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where he won a unanimous Premier Prix for piano as well as for chamber music and accompaniment. He also studied with Monique Deschaussées and György Sebok.

He has appeared as a soloist in Europe, North Africa, the Far East, and America, and has been a soloist with The Ensemble Intercontemporain since 1992. He has cooperated with a number of leading contemporary composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, and especially Pierre Boulez, whose Incises he premiered in 1995. In 2004, his recording of Martin Matalon's Le Scorpion with the Percussions de Strasbourg won the coveted Charles Cros Academy Grand Prix du Disque for Best Contemporary Music Recording. He has performed at leading contemporary music festivals such as Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Florence's Maggio Musicale, Warsaw Autumn, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, and the London Proms. He has appeared in concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonic (under Sir Simon Rattle), New York's Carnegie Hall, London's Royal Festival Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and Buenos Aires' Teatro Colón.

His repertoire runs from Bach to emerging contemporary composers including the complete piano works of Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis. His albums include, among others, Bach's Goldberg Variations and excerpts from The Well­Tempered Clavier in a first world performance for piano, harpsichord, and organ tuned in the Werckmeister III temperament (with Christine Auger and Pascal Vigneron, on the Quantum label, 2008), the demanding etudes of György Ligeti and Fabián Panisello (on Neos, 2010), and the first recording of Boulez's complete works for piano (on Cybele, 2012), including a notable performance of Répons. His recording of Incises and Sur Incises is featured in the collection of the complete works of Boulez published by Deutsche Grammophon.