François-Frédéric Guy

At the piano François-Frédéric Guy made mesmerising colours, erupting into shivery cascades and subterranean rumbles, a magician with sound. The Times, Rebecca Franks

As an outstanding interpreter of the music of German Romantics and their forebears as well as contemporary compositions, François-Frédéric Guy is pursuing a steady international career as both a soloist and as an orchestral conductor from the piano. Alongside great conductors such as Kent Nagano, Daniel Harding and Esa-Pekka Salonen, he has worked with renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Seoul Philharmonic, or the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. He has performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the NHK Symphony Orchestra; at the Printemps des Arts in Monaco, he performed piano concertos by Bartók and Schönberg with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and he made his debut with the Munich Philharmonic under Philippe Jordan with Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season include his play-conduct engagements with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa at the Centro Cultural de Belém, presenting the complete Beethoven and Chopin piano concertos. He also regularly conducts the Swiss ensemble Microcosme from his piano, having been its musical director since 2021. In December 2025, he will begin a series of Mozart's complete concertos at the Cité Bleue in Geneva.

Like few others, François-Frédéric Guy vividly realizes the compositional architecture of great works of the Classical and Romantic periods. He developed this ability particularly through his intensive dialogue with the music of Beethoven. His performances of the cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas have been celebrated worldwide, most recently in Seoul. The pianist also has a special affinity for Bartók, Brahms, Liszt, and Prokofiev, as well as for contemporary music. He is closely associated with the composers Tristan Murail, Ivan Fedele, Marc Monnet, and Hugues Dufourt, among others. The latest concerto premiere was Tristan Murail’s piano concerto L’oeil du cyclone, co-commissioned by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Orchestra Philhamonique de Radio France, the BBC Symphony, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2023/24. 

François-Frédéric Guy regularly conducts Beethoven's piano concertos as well as works by Mozart, Chopin, and Brahms from the piano. In the dual role as pianist and conductor, he has been working closely for several years with the Sinfonia Varsovia as well as with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, with whom he was artist-in-residence from 2017 to 2020. Guest appearances include collaborations with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, and the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire.  

Solo recitals have brought him to major concert halls in London, Milan, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Washington, and to festivals such as the Chopin Festival Warsaw, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Cheltenham Festival, and the Piano Festivals in La Roque d'Anthéron and Lille. He was also artist-in-residence at the Arsenal de Metz from 2014 to 2017. Having been featured as portrait artist at Wigmore Hall in the 2022/23 season, he has since then returned to the hall with various projects and chamber music partners. He recently enjoyed great success there with the Quatuor Danel, with whom he is continuing to collaborate in the current season. 

The centrepiece of his discography is the complete recording of the Beethoven sonatas for the Zig-Zag Territoires label, which had already released his highly acclaimed Liszt album with the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. In 2023, he released Secret Garden at La Dolce Volta featuring selected works by Chopin, recorded on a restored Pleyel piano from 1905. In the field of contemporary music, the CD Révolutions with the music of Tristan Murail and the Préludes of Debussy was released in 2022, following his recording of Marc Monnet's piano cycle En Pièces in early 2021. On the occasion of the “Beethoven Year 2020”, the complete recording of the Beethoven piano concertos under François-Frédéric Guy's overall direction with the Sinfonia Varsovia was released. His 2017 Brahms album of the three piano sonatas was followed in spring 2021 by a recording of Brahms's viola sonatas and trio.