Bogyeong Lee - A Story of Life - Piano Works of Émile Naoumoff (2022)

Born in Sofia in 1962, Emile Naoumoff was just five years old when he began studying piano. His parents brought the young prodigy to Paris at the age of seven into the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger, one of the greatest music teachers of the 20th century. Herself a pupil of Gabriel Fauré, she chose Emile to be her final disciple carrying her musical legacy forward, calling him the gift of her old age. Naoumoff’s 10 years studying very intensely with her were both rigorous and nurturing, inspiringly revealing his individual artistic and creative path. That excellence seeking placed Naoumoff into a musical circle of auspicious mentors such as Clifford Curzon, Igor Markevitch, Robert and Gaby Casadesus, Nikita Magaloff, Jean Françaix, Henri Dutilleux, Leonard Bernstein, Soulima Stravinsky, Aram Khachaturian, Sviatoslav Richter and, notably, Lord Yehudi Menhuin, who conducted the premiere of Naoumoff’s first piano concerto when the composer at the piano was just 10 years old. Alongside the guidance of Boulanger and that of her assistant Dieudonné in solfège, music analysis, keyboard harmony, counterpoint, fugue and composition, Naoumoff studied piano at the Paris Conservatory with Lélia Gousseau and Pierre Sancan as well as chamber music with Geneviève Joy. While at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, he studied conducting with Pierre Dervaux and by the time he was 18 was signed by the noted music publisher, Schott Music. Naoumoff’s career highlights include engagements with many of the world’s great orchestras, including Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and his own piano concerto’s paraphrase of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich at the Kennedy Center. A teacher at heart, Naoumoff followed in Boulanger’s steps, taking over her summer classes at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, following her death in late 1979. He later joined the Paris Conservatory prior to establishing his own summer academy in 1996 at the Château de Rangiport in Gargenville, France. Since 1998, Naoumoff has been Professor of piano at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana.