Swiss-born pianist
Cédric Pescia has recorded subtle interpretations of keyboard repertoire from
Couperin to
Messiaen. He has also been active as a chamber musician and as a coach for singers of lieder.
Pescia was born in 1976 in Lausanne and took up the piano at age seven. He enrolled at the Lausanne Conservatory, studying with Christian Favrel, and then moved to the Geneva Conservatory, where his teacher was
Dominique Merlet. At both these schools he took top prizes. He completed his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts, under
Klaus Hellwig.
Pescia took master classes from, among others,
Daniel Barenboim,
Irwin Gage,
Christian Zacharias, and, during several seasons at the International Piano Academy on Italy's Lake Como,
Leon Fleisher,
Andreas Staier, and
Fou Ts'ong. He also took chamber music coaching from the
Alban Berg Quartet.
A major prize breakthrough for
Pescia was a win at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Pescia has toured the U.S., South America, China, and North Africa, as well as Europe. Among his major appearances as soloist have been those with the
Utah Symphony, the
Orchestre Nationale de Lille, the
Camerata Bern, and the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. He has given recitals at the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Tonhalle Zürich, and London's Wigmore Hall.
Pescia has been a frequent guest at major European festivals.
Beginning ambitiously with a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on Switzerland's Claves label in 2005,
Pescia has continued to record for that label, and, at times, for Aeon. He has recorded an ongoing cycle of piano works by
Robert Schumann, and in 2017 his recording of violin sonatas by
Ernest Bloch, with his frequent duet partner
Nurit Stark, appeared on Claves.
Pescia often gives master classes and since 2012 has been professor of piano at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva.