Program and Artist Biography

Born in Switzerland (with Neapolitan roots) in 1977, Olivier Cavé studied piano at the conservatory in Sion and then at the Lausanne Conservatory, where he earned a diploma with a special prize and honors. He also participated in master classes with Maria Lilia Bertola in Milan and with Nelson Goerner in Geneva. In 1995 he met Maria Tipo and entered her class at the Fiesole School of Music. He has also benefited from the counsel of Aldo Ciccolini.

Cavé gave his first concert accompanied by the Camerata Lysy under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin in September 1991. He was a finalist at the Clara Schumann Competition in Düsseldorf in June 2000. In 2002 he performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for a radio broadcast by RAI (Italian radio) as part of a special series featuring all of the composer’s concertos for piano and orchestra in honor of Maria Tipo’s 70th birthday. He was invited by La Scala in Milan to the reopening of the theater’s museum and library in 2003, at which he performed opera transcriptions by Liszt on the composer’s piano.

Cavé has collaborated with artists such as Alexis Weissenberg, Menahem Pressler, Arie Vardi, Howard Griffiths, Tibor Varga, Barbara Hendricks, and Isabelle Huppert. He has performed as a soloist with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, the Galileo Galilei Orchestra of Fiesole, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

Cavé’s first recording, Réflexions, was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2004 and features works by Beethoven, Schubert, Scarlatti, and Schumann. His career took a new turn upon the release of his first recording for the Aeon label featuring sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Critics from throughout Europe praised pianist’s “return to the sources.” Dedicated to Muzio Clementi, Cavé’s second recording was even more striking than his first. Released in the autumn of 2010, it has been decorated with a “5 Diapason," a “4 Etoiles Classica,” and the highest award from the Japanese magazine Geijutsu Records. This success also led to invitations to perform at prestigious locations throughout the world, including the Teatro Olimpico in Rome and the Tonhalle in Zurich, as well as an extended concert tour under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini.

Cavé’s next projects include a Bach album for Aeon and a concert tour spotlighting Italian piano music on the East Coast of the United States.