Fully conscious of the scale of recording all Brahms’s solo piano music, Geoffroy Couteau devoted himself to it exclusively, taking the risk of an ‘artistic retreat’ for nearly two years in order to offer the very best of himself. Amazingly the recording project was completed in little more than three months and was unquestionably a real artistic adventure. A total immersion in Brahms, in chronological order of composition, with the exceptional recording team from La Dolce Volta.

Geoffroy Couteau studied in Paris with Michel Béroff, Denis Pascal and Eric Le Sage. He first encountered Op.118 aged 13 and was awarded first prize in the International Johannes Brahms competition in 2005. Praising his debut recording also dedicated to Brahms (‘ffff’ from Telerama, 4 stars from Le Monde de la Musique), Geoffroy Couteau was described as a ‘fearless’ pianist by Le Monde de la Musique, which compared the young artist’s interpretation to piano giants such as Gilels, Katchen, Lupu, Kempff and Serkin. Regularly exalted in the press among his emerging generation of pianists, his last CD devoted to Chopin and Scriabin also garnered enthusiastic critical acclaim.