Performances Discography

Evelyne Crochet performed on the major stages of Europe and the Americas. New York's Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, Chicago's Orchestra Hall, London's Royal Festival Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Vienna's Konzerthaus, Mexico City's Bellas Artes and Rio de Janeiro's Opera House are all part of a long list of venues where she has performed in solo recitals and as a soloist with orchestra.

The first of her many appearances with the Boston Symphony took place as Charles Munch asked her to step in on short notice to perform Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos with the composer in its Boston premiere.

Solo appearances with major orchestras include also the Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Puerto Rico Festival Orchestra, London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, The Hague Residency, Paris Orchestre National and Orchestre Philharmonique, the Symphonic Orchestra of Brazil, the Icelandic Orchestra and the orchestras of Bern, Bergen, and many others.

Carvalho, Commissiona, Downes, Foss, Foster, Janowski, Kempe, Kubelik, Leinsdorf, Martinon, B.Moyse, Munch, Neuman, Schmidt-Isserstedt and Steinberg, are among the many conductors she collaborated with.

Her festival appearances include the Marlboro Festival, Tanglewood's Berkshire Festival, New England Bach Festival, Newport Festival, Contemporary Music Festival of Puerto Rico, Woodstock's Byrdcliffe Festival, Adirondack Festival, and for many years, the Mt. Desert Island Maine Festival with the Composers Quartet.

With a vast repertoire spanning three centuries, Crochet introduced many twentieth century works: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Messiaen, Ginastera, Crumb, Dutilleux, Takemitsu, Holliger and Wyttenbach among others. She performed in concert the complete works of Debussy (Curtis Institute, Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase) and all Bach’s Well- Tempered Clavier (New England Bach Festival, Newport Festival). The season 2007-08 includes three acclaimed recital programs in Tokyo's Nexus Hall, featuring Debussy's Twelve Etudes, the two books of Images, and works by Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Faure and Takemitsu.

Other recordings include Gabriel Faure's complete piano works (quoted in the New York Times as "a labor of love"), unpublished works of Erik Satie (a world premiere), Bach and Schubert solo albums and Schubert four hand music with Alfred Brendel.

She appeared in duo with Philippe Petit, the world-renowned highwire artist and author, in several large-scale gala benefit performances at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, at the summer festival of the State University of NY at Purchase and in trio with Bill Irwin at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom in a fund raising event for the Arts after 9/11.

Evelyne Crochet was educated in her native country of France, winning First Prize at the Paris Conservatory as a student of Yvonne Lefebure and Nadia Boulanger. She also studied with Edwin Fischer in Switzerland, and it was in Bern that Rudolf Serkin extended to her a singular invitation to study with him in the United States. This unique sponsorship changed the course of her life and resulted in her emigration to the U.S.

She has held artist in residence and faculty positions at Brandeis University, Rutgers University, Boston University, Georgia State University and the New England Conservatory in Boston.

She resides in New York City.

   

Improvising Cadenzas

While on tour some years ago with the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456 with conductor Erich Leinsdorf, Evelyne Crochet, as it is customary for her, would improvise the cadenzas (the traditional moments in a concerto for solo improvisation). By nature, an improvisation is different every time and on this occasion at Carnegie Hall, she launches unexpectedly into the aria “La ci darem la mano” from the opera Don Giovanni. Mozart would have smiled at this fortuitous whimsy, which brings a large grin to Burton Fine, the first viola, sitting across the piano. But as they come off stage after the performance, Leinsdorf rails at her: “Don’t ever do that again.”

While this reflects the conductor’s preference for the security of the written page, it is opposite with Charles Munch, who gets a kick out of her flights of fancy on the numerous occasions she plays Mozart with him and the BSO. To Crochet, this is not done as a stunt. The act of extemporizing is as natural to her as breathing air, and underscores her performing philosophy. Improvising cadenzas, she feels, should come as a natural consequence of a thorough study of the score. Even in works without improvisation, she strives for spontaneity. When reviewing a performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, the London Daily Telegraph exclaims that “Clara [Schumann] could hardly have given a more spontaneous, fresher sounding reading than did Evelyne Crochet with the London Symphony”.

 

Playing Four-Hand with Father

The art of improvisation is second nature to her. One day, at age two or three, as she lays eyes on the piano she immediately hears individual keys translating themselves into actual, specific tones in her head. With her tiny fingers, she then plucks out melodies she has heard – an ability inherited from her father, a self-taught musician who spends hours every day at the piano singing and playing operas by ear and inventing his own music. Father and daughter constantly improvise together on four hands and play musical games, transposing his tunes in all keys according to the circle of fifths. She spends hours exploring the keyboard; it is obvious she willl be a musician.

Training at the Paris Conservatoire

Crochet considers her theoretical studies at the Paris Conservatoire fundamental to her musical education. Her classes – from solfège begun at age 10, to harmony, to counterpoint and fugue – all lead her to Nadia Boulanger’s famous Class of Accompaniment, a course involving reading at first sight orchestral scores by reduction and transposition, creating improvisations, and realizing figured bass.

Her piano teacher Yvonne Lefébure, a pupil of Alfred Cortot, is a remarkable artist of vast culture. Her playing is colorfully alive and she always puts the import of the score front and center. Lefébure makes for a memorable vision, a petite figure sometimes donning huge wide-brim hats. She would open Crochet to new vistas, pointing out connections beyond piano works to orchestral, operatic and other forms of art.

  

Discovering the Soviet Union

Following her first prize at the Conservatoire, Crochet, selected by the French government to enter the first Tchaikovsky competition, journeys to Moscow. She emerges as one of the laureates and, as such, the Russian Ministry of Culture invites her to make a recording – her first – one comprising of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A minor, K. 310, and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110. The record eventually wins a special distinction award in Russia.

Her interest in Russia is broader than the competition itself, however; she wants to discover its people and culture. The experience in Russia has been indelible. “Russian people are warm-hearted and were  starved for everything,” as Crochet would observe. This emotional openness touches her all the more because it contrasts with the deliberate insouciance and Cartesian logic of the people of France.

    

A Turning Point: Coming to America

Returning from Moscow, she next travels to Lucerne, again on a French government grant, to realize her dream: to work with Edwin Fischer. Crochet has heard Fischer perform every time he comes to Paris and has been profoundly marked by his unique touch and musicianship. She happily immerses herself in the teachings of this great artist.

After Lucerne, she joins a friend for vacation in Bern, where the director of the conservatory urges her to participate in a week of public classes given by Rudolf Serkin. Little does she realize it is to fundamentally alter her life course. Her playing makes such an impression on Serkin that he and his entire traveling family invite her to return to the United States to study with him and live with them. And off she goes to America, living with the Serkins in Philadelphia and Vermont, where she will attend the Marlboro Music Festival, a summer music center founded by Serkin, Adolf Busch and the Moyse family.

Performing with Poulenc and the BSO

Crochet is invited to join the faculty of Brandeis University. She remains there for six years, collaborating with distinguished faculty members in chamber music performances. During this time she also appears many times with the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler, which prompts the French Consul General to arrange for Crochet to audition for Charles Munch.

Her collaboration with the Boston Symphony Orchestra comes about when Munch suddenly needs a substitute pianist to play the Concerto for Two Pianos by Francis Poulenc, a work to receive its Boston premiere by the composer and Jacques Fevrier. Fevrier has been taken ill and Crochet steps in, learning the piece on very short notice. When Poulenc arrives, he finds her so well prepared that he feels he must seriously practice to match her precise execution. Although she has committed the music to memory, he requests that they perform with the score because he does not want to trust his memory. His Boston visit is a delight for Evelyne, they become fast friends, and he enchants all her friends with his wit and charm, and his countless stories.

Biographical anecdotes taken from interviews with David Tsang.

 

Performances

ORCHESTRAL REPERTOIRE
SOLO RECITALS & CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

ORCHESTRAS

United States Baltimore Symphony Boston Pops Orchestra Boston Symphony Orchestra Buffalo Philharmonic Charlotte Symphony Chicago Symphony Orchestra Detroit Symphony Harrisburgh Symphony Louisville Orchestra Manchester Symphony Marlboro Festival Orchestra Minnesota Orchestra New England Festival Orchestra Orchestra 2001 Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra Pittsburgh Symphony Princeton Chamber Orchestra Puerto Rico Festival Orchestra St. Louis Chamber Symphony Southwest Florida Orchestra Syracuse Orchestra

International Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra Bergen Symphony Cologne Chamber Orchestra Icelandic Symphony London Philharmonic Orchestra London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra Orchestra of Bern Orchestre de Chambre de Paris Orchestre de Lille Orchestre National de France Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris The Residency of the Hague Orchestra Symphonic Orchestra of Brazil

ORCHESTRAL REPERTOIRE