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Roger Muraro & Florent Boffard
Biography Roger Muraro & Florent Boffard
Roger Muraro
Born in Lyon, Roger Muraro began by studying the saxophone before teaching himself the piano. At seventeen, he entered Yvonne Loriod’s class at the Paris Conservatoire, where he met Olivier Messiaen. He soon established himself as one of that composer’s foremost interpreters. He also studied with Éliane Richepin and developed a dazzling technique, winning prizes at both the Franz Liszt Competition in Parma and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. His playing combines imagination and rigour in the service of poetry and sincerity.
He has performed with leading conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Myung-Whun Chung, Marek Janowski, Zubin Mehta and Simon Rattle, and has built an extensive discography ranging from twentieth-century masters such as Messiaen, Boulez, Bartók and Ives to recordings of works by Rachmaninoff, Albéniz, Liszt, Chopin, Ravel and Debussy.
In 2016, he assembled the surviving sketches of an unfinished work by Messiaen for several soloists and adapted them for solo piano under the title Fauvettes de l’Hérault – concert des garrigues. He gave its world première in Tokyo in 2017 and made its first recording the following year.
Alongside Lambert Wilson, he has performed Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, and his 2024 Alpha Classics recording of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage gives pride of place to the Romantic repertoire. Roger Muraro is an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Florent Boffard
has been a guest at the leading festivals (Salzburg, Berlin, Bath, Aldeburgh, La Roque d’Anthéron…) and has performed under the direction of Pierre Boulez, Simon Rattle, Leon Fleisher and Péter Eötvös with the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, among others.
As a soloist with the Ensemble Intercontemporain from 1988 to 1999, he worked with the foremost composers of our time and premiered pieces by Boulez, Donatoni, Ligeti, Kurtág…
His concern to help the public to understand the contemporary repertory better has led him to conduct numerous workshops and concert presentations, particularly at the Festival de La Roque d’Anthéron, Aldeburgh Festival, Printemps des Arts de Monte Carlo. He also wrote the film “Schoenberg, the misunderstood composer” and he presented the programme “Chopin, une écoute aujourd’hui”, live on Arte at La Folle Journée de Nantes.
The Forberg-Schneider Foundation (Munich) awarded Florent Boffard its Belmont Prize for his commitment to contemporary music.
He recorded Schœnberg’s piano works and Bartók’s piano pieces, both selected as “Editor’s Choice” by Gramophone. He also recorded with Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Boulez) and with Isabelle Faust (Bartók and Fauré). Recently, he premiered and recorded “Antiphonie” by Boulez.
Florent Boffard holds a professorship at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris and at IESM of Aix-en-Provence.
