Richard Raymond
piano (Canada)
Richard Raymond has won virtually every award there is to win in Canada. In 1990 he won the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Competition, as well as the "International Stepping Stone" of the Canadian Music Competition. In 1991 he captured all the top prizes in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Young Performer's Competition. In 1992 he was finally recognized on the international scene. He became only the second Canadian to win the prestigious Montreal International Competition triumphing over 49 contestants from 18 countries. Soon after, he won the Chamber Music Prize at the Van Cliburn Competition, the first award ever to go to a Canadian artist in this competition. Mr. Raymond received major prizes at the prestigious 1998 William Kapell International Piano Competition (U.S.) and the 1999 Vianna da Motta Competition (Portugal). He is the 1998 recipient of the prestigious Virginia Parker Prize awarded by the Canada Council.
Raymond's performances with the Montreal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, and essentially every major orchestra in Canada have been met with great excitement. Recitals, festival appearances, and chamber music engagements have taken him across Canada, to Italy, France, and the United States. Debuts at the Lincoln Center in New York, at the Ruhr Klavier-Festival in Germany, In Paris, France, and with the Shangai Symphony Orchestra were all memorable events.
Richard Raymond has produced four compact discs for the Analekta and Musica Viva labels. His newest CD featuring the Reubke Piano Sonata in B-flat minor and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 (“Waldstein”) was released in late 2003 by Analekta. Raymond studied with the great American pedagogue Leon Fleisher, Marc Durand, John Perry, Lise Boucher, and Antoine Reboulot. He has a master's degree from the Universite de Montreal and an artist diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto and the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.
