Idil Biret manifested an outstanding gift for music at the age of three and was trained at the Paris Conservatory under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger. She studied with Alfred Cortot and was a lifelong disciple of Wilhelm Kempff who considered her as her best student. Since the age of sixteen Idil Biret has given concerts throughout the world with major orchestras including the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, BBC Orchestras, Leningrad Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Dresden Staatskapelle, Berlin Radio Symphony, French National Orchestra, Polish Radio Symphony, Orchestre Suisse Romande, Warsaw Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Among the eminent conductors with whom she has collaborated with are Pierre Monteux, Joseph Keilberth, Hermann Scherchen, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Alexander Dimitreev, Eric Leinsdorf, Rudolf Kempe, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Charles Mackerras, Moshe Atzmon, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Sir Andrew Davis, Anthony Wit and Aaron Copland. Her first US concert took place on 22 November 1963 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the immediate aftermath of the tragic event of President Kennedy's death that day.
Idil Biret has participated in many festivals including Montreal, Berlin, Paris, Nohant, Duszniki, Athens, Persepolis, Dubrovnik, Montreal, Royan, Montpellier, Weimar and Istanbul. She has played Beethoven Sonatas with Yehudi Menuhin and the Mozart Concerto for two pianos with Wilhelm Kempff. Idil Biret has served on the juries of many competitions including the Van Cliburn (USA), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Montreal (Canada), Busoni (Italy), Liszt (Weimar, Germany, Utrecht, Holland) and Messiaen (Paris). She has received the following awards; Lily Boulanger Memorial, Boston; Harriet Cohen - Dinu Lipatti gold medal, London; Adelaide Ristori prize, Italy; Artistic Merit and Order of Merit, Poland; Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite, France; State Artist, Turkey. She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from many universities.
Idil Biret has played, as cycles, the complete piano works of Beethoven and Brahms. In the 1980s she performed, in two series of concerts, Beethoven's thirty-two Sonatas and the piano transcriptions (by Liszt) of all nine Symphonies, the latter broadcast live by Radio France. In the 1990s she played Beethoven's five Piano Concertos, the Choral Fantasia and the Triple Concerto in five concerts. In 1997 she played all the solo piano works of Brahms in a series of five recitals in Germany during the composer's centennial anniversary.
Idil Biret has made more than eighty records for Decca, EMI, Atlantic/Finnadar, Naxos and other companies. These include the world premiere recording of the nine Beethoven Symphonies transcriptions by Liszt for EMI (6LP/1986). She has also recorded the complete solo piano works and all the concertos of Chopin (15CD/1992), Brahms (12CD/1997), Rachmaninov (10CD/2000) and the three piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez (1995), the Etudes of Ligeti (2003) and Stgravinsky's transcription of The Firebird (2003) for Naxos, and Massenet's Concerto with Franck's Symphonic Variations and Les Djinns for Alpha in France (2006) . Her recording of the complete works of Chopin was awarded a "Grand Prix du Disque Chopin" prize in Poland in 1995. The same year the recording of the Boulez Sonatas won the annual Golden Diapason award and was selected among the best recordings of the year by Le Monde newspaper in France. In 2004 the sale of her CDs worldwide reached two million copies. Naxos commemorated this event by presenting Biret with a platinum disc.
Idil Biret has finalized recording the complete cycle of Beethoven's Sonatas, distributed worldwide by Naxos on her own label Idil Biret Archive (IBA), together with all the Piano Concertos and the Liszt transcriptions of the Symphonies on 19 CDs. In 2006 a book about her life story and musical thoughts was published by Buchet/Chastel with the title "Idil Biret, a Turkish Pianist in France" and subsequently published by Staccato Verlag in Germany and Can Yayinlari in Turkey under the title "A Turkish Pianist on the concert stages of the World". An English translation of the book was also printed in a private limited edition in 2009. In 2007 the Polish President Lech Kaczsknky decorated Biret with the Distinguished Service Order - Cavalry Cross, Poland's highest order, for her contribution to Polish culture through her recordings and performances of Chopin's music. Biret has now embarked on a new edition of the complete piano scores of Chopin for the American music publishing firm IMC of New York. A documentary film on Idil Biret's life is now being prepared.
*Please see www.idilbiretarchive.eu