Zajtmann, Ilan
Frederic Chopin
Born in 2001 in Lyon, France, into a family of musicians, Ilan Zajtmann studied piano with his father from the age of 3. From auditions to competitions, he became familiar with the stage and the audience at an early age. After his studies at the conservatory in his hometown, he first joined the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Lyon in 2014 in the class of Florent Boffard, then that of Paris where he studied with Roger Muraro and Marie-Josèphe Jude. He also honed his skills at the Schola Cantorum with pianist Igor Lazko. In 2020, he was admitted to a piano master's degree in the class of Professor Boris Berman at the prestigious Yale University. Since his first recital in Strasbourg in 2010, Ilan Zajtmann has continuously performed on stage. He was only 10 years old when he first played as a soloist with orchestra in Salvador de Bahia with the Neojiba ensemble conducted by Ricardo Castro in Beethoven's first concerto. He is regularly invited to participate in festivals, solo or chamber music, in France or abroad. Despite his precocity, Ilan Zajtmann has always kept his distance from the "child prodigy" model. Far from giving in to the temptation of a virtuoso outbid, he approaches great works with humility, fully abiding by the words of Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot (1877-1962): "A great artist is not the one who is ignorant of technique but the one who forgets it".