İdil Biret

Biret began her lessons at the age of five with Mithat Fenmen, who had studied under Nadia Boulanger and Alfred Cortot. When she was seven, the Turkish parliament enacted a special law which enabled her to study abroad and so she studied at the Paris Conservatory in France under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger and Jean Doyen. She graduated with three prizes at the age of 15. She continued her education with Alfred Cortot and Wilhelm Kempff. ==Musical career==

She was already interested in music at the age of 2 and started to play Johann Sebastian Bach's preludes at the age of 4. She has been a jury member at several piano competitions: Van Cliburn (US), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Montreal (Canada), Liszt (Weimar, Germany) and Busoni (Italy). Her numerous recordings (more than 100 to date) for labels such as EMI, Decca, Atlantic, Finnadar and Naxos include the Saint-Saëns' piano concertos nos. 2, 4, 5, world-premiere recording of Liszt's transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies (EMI 6LP/1986), complete solo piano works and concertos of Chopin (15CD/1992), of Brahms (12CD/1997), Rachmaninoff (10CD/2000) and the piano transcription of Stravinsky’s ballet music The Firebird (2003) and many others. Biret's wide repertoire encompasses much of the late Classical and Romantic piano literature. She is probably best known for her Chopin recordings, which won her the prestigious 'Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin' in Poland in 1995. In 2004 the sale of her Naxos CDs worldwide reached two million copies. Naxos commemorated this event by presenting Biret with a platinum disc. The same year the Boulez sonatas recording won the annual Golden Diapason award and was selected among the best recordings of the year by Le Monde newspaper in France. It was released in 2008–2009 as an integral set, along with her 1986 EMI recordings of the nine Beethoven symphonies, as transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt. The complete set will include 19 CDs. Biret recorded most of the sonatas near Brussels between 2001–2005 (three were recorded in 1994). She recorded the concertos with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit in 2008. Biret is the only pianist to have performed all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, concertos and Liszt transcriptions of the nine symphonies in public concerts. She is now the first pianist to have recorded them all. In an interview in 2014, she expressed interest in improvisation and the Opus Clavicembalisticum by Sorabji. ==Awards and recognition==

Biret has been a State Artist since 1971, an honorary title issued to artists by the government of Turkey for their contributions into the Turkish culture. In 1987 Gürdal Duyar, renowned sculptor of Atatürk monuments around Turkey, offered to sculpt a bust of her. He arrived at her house with a lump of clay in his hand, however after working on the clay bust for some time the clay started to dry out and crack and Duyar left with the work in progress, the bust, to make a plaster cast mould of it. After Duyar died, the fate of the bust was unknown for some time until it resurfaced when Şefik Büyükyüksel, the spouse of Biret, discovered a photo of it online in the private collection of Dr. Baha Toygar who had bought it from a gallery owned by Emel Say. In 1995, Biret's recordings of Chopin's entire oeuvre was awarded the "Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin" in Poland. The same year, she won the "Diapason d'Or" prize in France for her recording of Boulez's sonatas, which was selected among the best recordings of the year by the newspaper Le Monde. Biret also received the following awards: the Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize in Boston (US), the Harriet Cohen/Dinu Lipatti Gold Medal in London (UK) the Polish Prize for Artistic Merits, the National Knight Merit Order of France, the Adelaide Ristori Prize, Italy. In 2007 she was decorated with Distinguished Service Order – Cavalry Cross by the Polish President Lech Kaczynski for her contributions to Polish culture with her recordings and performances of Chopin's music. ==References==