Sunday April 15, 2018 in Mclean:

Mathilde Handelsman

piano

Program

Claude Debussy (1868-1918)

Images, books 1 and 2 (1905-1907)
Estampes (1903)
Masques, D’un Cahier d’Esquisses, L’Isle Joyeuse (1904)“

Praised for “her calm technical control, her immediate sense of balance” as well as for “extraordinary vigor, flawless musicality” (Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, 2013), French pianist Mathilde Handelsman has performed as a solo and chamber musician throughout Europe and the United States. Recent and upcoming highlights include the Sarasota Music Festival, Pianofest in  the Hamptons, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris.

Mathilde was born in Paris in 1990 to a family of musicians and artists. She is the granddaughter of New Yorker cartoonist J.B.Handelsman.

Mathilde started the piano with her mother at age four. She attended the pre-college division of the Conservatoire de Paris at Rue de Madrid from childhood through high school, where she majored in Voice and Piano Performance and received advanced training in solfege, theory, harmony and composition. She then studied five years with Laurent Cabasso at the University of Strasbourg, graduating with a Masters in Piano Performance Magna Cum Laude.

In 2015, Mathilde moved to the United States to study with legendary Beaux-Arts Trio pianist Menahem Pressler at Indiana University-Bloomington, with a teaching assistantship. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate (DMA) with John O’Conor at Shenandoah University on a full tuition scholarship.

Through international masterclasses, Mathilde has also received guidance from Robert Levin, Andrei Gavrilov, Asaf Zohar, Robert McDonald, Boris Berman, Michel Beroff and Christopher Elton.

Furthermore, in the past two years Mathilde published two books of poems in French: Pré-sage (2016) and L’Absurde Génie des Fleurs (2017).