Valentine Buttard was born in France in 1986. She initially studied under Rena Shereshevskaya in Colmar (France) before joining Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in 2005. She also attended masterclasses by Grigory Gruzman, Lev Naoumov, Emmanuel Krasovski, Wolfgang Manz, Brigitte Engerer and Francois-René Duchable. In 2011, she received a scholarship from the Musik braucht Freunde program.
Now a qualified soloist and teacher, she performs regularly in France, Germany and Switzerland as a soloist, a chamber musician and with various orchestras. The festivals she has played at include the Lille Piano(s) Festival, the Festival International de Colmar (Spivakov Festival), the Festival International de Besançon, the Festival International de piano de Saint-Ursanne (Switzerland) and the Jeunes Talents festival in Paris. Since 2007, she has also appeared every year at the Salon de Musique en Franche-Comté (France).
Her repertoire as a soloist includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. Also a passionate chamber musician, she performs regularly as a piano duo called Barcarolle with Elena Bobrovskikh.
Lauded by great contemporary composers for the sensitivity of her interpretations, Valentine Buttard has been devoted to playing and sharing their music for a number of years. It therefore comes as no surprise that she won first prize at the 2002 edition of the International Competition of Contemporary Music in Fribourg (Switzerland) and the Concours International de Piano d’Île de France in 2009, where she received a special prize for her interpretation of a Prélude by Henri Dutilleux. The French composer Philippe Hersant even dedicated his cycle Steps to her.
The scholarships she received from the Fravanni Fund granted by the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium) and the Safran Foundation in Paris enabled her to record her first CD featuring two cycles by Hersant (Steps and Éphémères), which was released in November 2015 on the label NoMadMusic (Paris).
Photos: © Claire Cocano/Jean-François Mariotti
