Anne Queffelec (b1948)

At the Munich International Festival in 1968 Queffélec won first prize and the following year won fifth prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. She has since had an international career and raised a family. She has played in Europe, Japan, USA, Israel and Canada and worked with conductors including Rudolf Barshai, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Neville Marriner, John Eliot Gardiner and James Conlon. Queffélec has played with many of the London orchestras including the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic and BBC Symphony and participated in many British music festivals including the Proms, Cheltenham, Bath and King’s Lynn. Queffélec also enjoys playing chamber music and has performed with violinists Augustin Dumay and Pierre Amoyal, the Endellion and Chilingirian Quartets, and as a duo pianist with Imogen Cooper.

In 1990 Queffélec won the Victoire de la Musique Award for the best French Classical artist of the year. She is known for her performances of the French repertoire, particularly Ravel, Debussy, Satie and Dutilleux, but she also plays Bach, Scarlatti and Mozart.

Queffélec’s main recordings have been made for Erato in France and Virgin in Britain. She has also recorded for Chandos and Ottavo. Of the Erato recordings made in the 1970s there is a fine disc of thirteen Scarlatti sonatas full of clarity, delicacy and brilliance, made when Queffélec was twenty-two. There is also a two-disc set of Schubert’s works for four hands where Queffélec is joined by Imogen Cooper, and an excellent disc containing both piano concertos by Ravel, coupled with Debussy’s Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra. For Virgin Queffélec has recorded the complete piano works of Dutilleux and Ravel, and the major works of Satie. Her Ravel recordings were perfectly summed up by a critic when he wrote in The Gramophone magazine, ‘…her playing is too brightly lit, too limited in colour to suggest the more interior qualities of Ravel’s work. Yet having said that there is much to admire.’ These are indeed enjoyable performances, yet the recorded sound and lack of dynamic range is a drawback. There are preferable recordings by other artists in this repertoire, but in Dutilleux, Queffélec is ideal and has few rivals, particularly in the Piano Sonata. She has also recorded the Concerto for Two Pianos by Poulenc with Jean-Bernard Pommier, and in 1993 Queffélec joined Imogen Cooper, in her complete series of Mozart piano sonatas for Ottavo, playing sonatas for piano duet.

For Chandos’s Debussy and Ravel series with the Ulster Orchestra and Yan Pascal Tortelier, Queffélec recorded Debussy’s Fantaisie again in 1991. Her most recent recording was made for the French label Mirare and is of piano works by Mozart including the Piano Sonata in C minor K. 457 and the Rondo in A minor K. 511.