[Interview] Sélim Mazari

Interview of the pianist Sélim Mazari, right before his concert at the Fondation Louis Vuitton on Thursday 16 January 2020.

Last year, his jubilant interpretations of Debussy and Scarlatti fired the enthusiasm of music lovers everywhere; now, French pianist Sélim Mazari returns to the Fondation Louis Vuitton Auditorium for an encore.

With his characteristic originality, Sélim Mazari chooses Beethoven and his variation ingenuity for this performance through two cycles, including the famous Eroica. The German musician’s art echoes the energetic virtuosity of Enesco and Prokofiev. Of the Sonata No. 6, pianist Sviatoslav Richter has said, “The remarkable stylistic clarity and the structural perfection of the music amazed me. I had never heard anything like it. With wild audacity the composer broke with the ideals of Romanticism and introduced into his art the terrifying pulse of twentieth-century music.”

THE ARTIST

France’s recent Victoires de la Musique Classique trained the spotlight on the Révélations de l’Année and young pianist Sélim Mazari, conspicuously influenced by the teaching of the great Brigitte Engerer, is among these talents to watch.

Born to a family of music lovers in 1992 in Garenne-Colombes, Sélim Mazari was playing his first scales at a very early age. His parents’ neighbour was Suzel Ginisty, a student of Brigitte Engerer, who gave him his first lessons at the age of five. His dazzling progress led to his acceptance in 2004 in Pierre Réach’s class at the Paris Conservatory, when Sélim was only 10 years old.