Check out my latest album LIVE
Jean-Nicolas Diatkine, born in 1964, began his piano studies at the age of 6 with the pianist Wilfredo Voguet, who quickly encouraged him to become a concert performer. His parents, renowned doctors, preferred to wait until the end of his scientific studies at lycée before supporting him in this direction. After working with several students from the Arrau school in France and the United States (Carlindo Valériani, Joseph Villa, Kenneth Broadaway), it was in London that he met Ruth Nye, a student of Claudio Arrau, with whom he perfected his technique and the art of producing the colours of sound. Then it was the composer Narcis Bonet, who for 13 years introduced him to the meticulous analysis of the musical architecture of the works he performed.
Chopin advised his pupils to listen to singers; Jean-Nicolas Diatkine took him at his word and chose to work between 1996 and 2007 as an accompanist and then vocal coach at Yva Barthélémy’s singing school in Paris. This experience enabled him to explore the German Lied repertoire, knowledge of which is essential for grasping the poetic universe of composers such as Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.
In 2000, he came to the attention of mezzo-soprano Alicia Nafé and tenor Zeger Vandersteene, accompanying them on numerous recitals in France, Belgium and Spain. The stage experience he shared with these great artists inspired him to perform as a soloist, and this is what he did from 1999 onwards in France and Belgium, notably in the “Autour du Piano” concert series, at the “Pianissime” piano festival, at the Opéra Bastille, and in Ghent in Belgium, where the public voted him “best piano revelation of the last ten years”. Since 2011, he has performed every year at the Salle Gaveau in Paris and in numerous private concerts. In May 2017, he made his first tour of Japan (Tokyo, Yamanashi) and recently performed in Berlin.
Jean-Nicolas Diatkine conceives his concert programmes as a play in which the place of the works must make sense. This approach has led him to perform a wide range of well-known and lesser-known works for piano, including Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata and Op.101 Sonata, Schubert’s last Sonata D.960, Schumann’s Symphonic Studies, Chopin’s Four Ballades, Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Handel, Handel’s Suites, Soler’s Sonatas and Shostakovich’s Preludes. In gratitude to his master Narcis Bonet, he has performed and recorded his Five Nocturnes.
