Pierre Vallet - Conductor
Praised for the elegance and intensity of his interpretations, French conductor Pierre Vallet is a frequent guest with the world’s great opera companies.
The New York Times selected his conducting of Persée et Andromède by Ibert at the Manhattan School of Music as one of the ten best classical performances in New York in 2016.
He has conducted Madama Butterfly and Faust at the Metropolitan Opera; Tannhäuser at L’Opéra National de Paris; Don Carlo at the Lithuanian National Opera Theater; La Juive at the Göteborg Opera Sweden; Faust at the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona.
Elsewhere he has conducted Eugene Onegin, Tannhäuser, and Otello at Tokyo Opera Nomori; L'Enfant et les Sortilèges and Persée et Andromède by Jacques Ibert at the Manhattan School of Music in New York; Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Hänsel and Gretel at the Saito Kinen Festival; Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle in Shanghai and Beijing; Madama Butterfly at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan; and Massenet’s Manon at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Upcoming engagements include Samson et Dalila at the Dallas Opera; Orfeo at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis; and Don Carlo at the Lithuanian National Opera Theater.
Maestro Vallet's symphonic work includes several appearances at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; the Royal Camerata in Bucharest; the Spoleto Festival USA; and the Greenwich Village Orchestra in New York.
With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Elizabeth Sombart, he recorded the Chopin piano concertos, and a CD of adagios of piano concertos due to be released in the spring of 2017.
Vallet is a long-serving member of the Metropolitan Opera, first as a pianist and coach and later joining the roster of staff conductors.
He has enjoyed a long-term musical partnership with Seiji Ozawa, working closely together on some forty operatic productions and concerts throughout Japan, the US and Europe, encompassing a large and diverse repertoire.
As chorus master, he has prepared the New York Choral Artists in Joan at the Stake by Honegger for the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert. He prepared the SKF Matsumoto Choir and the Ritsuyukai Choir for Britten’s War Requiem (Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall), the Tokyo Opera Singers for La Damnation de Faust, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony conducted by Seiji Ozawa at the Saito Kinen Festival. He has also appeared as conductor and lecturer at the choral festival Tokyo Cantat.
As a pianist, he has performed in duo recitals in both the US and Europe with some of the world’s most renowned singers, including Natalie Dessay, Maria Guleghina, Ying Huang, Denyce Graves (at the White House) and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. More recently he appeared at the Vienna State Opera with Roberto Alagna, and with Joyce di Donato in a live stream concert for the release of her new album Stella Di Napoli.
A committed educator, Pierre Vallet is a sought-after lecturer and guest teacher at the world’s premier training institutions. In addition to his work with the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, he has been a regular visitor to the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Wolf Trap Opera Company, the Houston Grand Opera Studio and Opera Hong Kong.
Vallet studied conducting and the theory of phenomenology in music with Sergiù Celibidache, piano with Louis Hilbrand in Geneva and Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He is a graduate of L’Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.