Nelson Goerner
Professor of Piano
- Portrait
--- Nelson Goerner will not be taking on any new students for the start of the 2025-26 academic year ---
Born in 1969 in San Pedro, Argentina, Nelson Goerner began studying piano at the age of five with Jorge Garruba and continued his studies at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires with Juan Carlos Arabian and Carmen Scalcione. He gave his first concert in his hometown in 1980 and won the First Prize at the Franz Liszt Competition in Buenos Aires in 1986. Thanks to his exceptional talent, Martha Argerich awarded him a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire de Genève in Maria Tipo's virtuosity class.
September 1990 marked a turning point in his career when he won the First Prize at the Geneva Competition unanimously for his performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which invited him back the following season to perform Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. This award led to numerous concerts in Europe and a successful tour in Japan.
Since then, Nelson Goerner has been invited by most major French festivals and has given recitals in many European cities. He also performs chamber music with the Takács Quartet in the UK, Spain, Italy, and France, the Carmina Quartet in Switzerland, the Ysaye Quartet in Holland, and with Steven Isserlis and Vadim Repin in London.
Nelson Goerner has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Claus-Peter Flor, the London Philharmonic and the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague under Franz Welser-Möst, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Neeme Järvi, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Andrew Davis, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and David Zinman, the Netherlands Philharmonic and Vassily Sinaisky, the Bordeaux and Montpellier Orchestras with Yutaka Sado, the Orchestre National de France and Hans Graf, among many others. His future engagements include concerts with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Liège Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and recitals in London, Paris, Lyon, Manchester, and Dallas.
Nelson Goerner has recorded a Chopin recital (EMI Classics), a Rachmaninov recital and the 12 Transcendental Etudes by Liszt for Cascavelle, Rachmaninov's Preludes and Piano Concerto No. 3 with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Vassily Sinaisky, Busoni's works for piano and orchestra, Liszt's concertos, a Brahms and Schubert recital for Cascavelle, and a new work by John Lord for EMI Classics. His recent recordings of Chopin on historical instruments have earned him a Diapason d'Or.
