David Kadouch is a French pianist whose programmes start from a story. “Amours interdites” explores the hidden loves of composers from Tchaikovsky and Szymanowski to Reynaldo Hahn and Poulenc, and includes first recordings of works by Wanda Landowska. “Les Musiques de Madame Bovary” imagines the music Flaubert’s heroine might have heard, alongside the women composers of her time. “Contes”, his new album with Sandrine Piau, has just been released on Alpha.

A committed champion of women composers, he performs works by Louise Farrenc, Pauline Viardot, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and Rita Strohl.

He performs across Europe, Asia and Latin America, as a soloist with orchestra, in recital and in chamber music. As a soloist he has appeared with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Hallé, under conductors including David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Myung-Whun Chung and Marc Minkowski. In 2027 he plays Clara Schumann’s concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic and Olari Elts. His chamber music partners include Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Edgar Moreau, Antoine Tamestit, Sandrine Piau and the Quatuor Ébène.

Firmly rooted in his time, he shares classical music far beyond the concert hall, with more than 160,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, and co-hosts a chronicle series on Radio Classique.

He first played with Itzhak Perlman in New York at the age of 13. He studied with Jacques Rouvier at the Paris Conservatoire and with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofía School in Madrid. He was a prizewinner at the Leeds International Piano Competition and was named Young Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique Classique in 2010.