Nour Ayadi was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and began playing the piano at the age of 6. At age 17 she was admitted to the Conservatoire of Paris, in Claire Désert’s class, and to the École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot. She moved to Paris to pursue her musical career and to complete her final school year (Terminale Scientifique) and a baccalaureate, graduating with distinction.

Nour quickly made her mark in France: at the age of 20, she was awarded the prestigious Prix Cortot. That same year, she was a laureate of Virtuoses du coeur (first prize) and in 2017 she was awarded first prize at the Baku International Classical Music Competition. In 2016 she won the Grand Prize at the HRH Lalla Meryem International Piano Competition in Morocco. The Prix Cortot gave her the opportunity to perform at several festivals: the International Piano Festival of La Roque d’Anthéron, the Folles Journées de Nantes, the Glafsforden Musik Festival in Sweden, the Chopin-Nohant Festival, the Solistes à Bagatelles, and the Pianissimes.

She was also able to play with the Opéra de Massy Orchestra, the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the Moroccan Philharmonic Orchestra and, soon, the Orchestre des lauréats du Conservatoire and the Orchestre de Paris. She has performed in such prestigious venues as the Musikverein (Vienna), Flagey (Brussels), Salle Cortot (Paris), Opéra de Dijon, Opéra de Massy and La Seine Musicale, among others. In 2020 Nour released her first album, featuring works by Robert and Clara Schumann as well as Stravinsky, which was broadcast on France Musique and the Women’s Radio Station in London.

Nour is currently supported by the ADAMI Foundation, the Fondation l’Ambassadrice, the Meyer Foundation, the Fondation Banque Populaire Maroc, the Lieven Piano Foundation, the Centre Nadia and Lili Boulanger, and the Académie Musicale de Villecroze. Alongside her budding career as a soloist, Nour is studying for a master’s in public affairs at Sciences Po in Paris, where she is involved in cultural projects at the French National Assembly, the UN in Geneva, and UNICEF. She was recently named laureate of the Fondation Gautier Capuçon. 

After obtaining a master’s degree with distinction from the Conservatoire, Nour joined the 2021–22 class of artists at the Académie Jaroussky and is studying for an artist diploma at the Conservatoire of Paris.

Nour is also interested in the teaching aspect of the musician’s profession and is following an educational course at the Conservatoire of Paris. This has enabled her to work on several outreach projects in partnership with the Philharmonie de Paris, among others. Since September 2021, Nour has been artist in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, where she is accompanied and supervised by Louis Lortie and Avedis Kouyoumdjian.

She also works with the famous teacher and pianist Nelson Goerner in Geneva, as part of the Master Soloist program at the Haute École de Musique, which she will complete at the end of 2023.

Her future engagements include a series of concerts with the Orchestre de Paris at the Philharmonie, chamber music recitals with cellist Marc Coppey and violinist Emmanuel Coppey, Mozart’s Concerto K. 459 with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, and the preparation of her second solo album.

Nour benefits from a scholarship granted by M. & Mrs. Régnier Haegelsteen, from a scholarship granted by La Banque Populaire du Maroc and the outstanding support of l’Académie de Villecroze.

Piano

Nour Ayadi

Cello

Gautier Capuçon

 (Piano), nominated by (and performing with) 

An expressive meditation on Rachmaninov, Debussy, and Liszt

For me, [the piano] is the place where I find myself, where I can meditate, be almost in a sort of trance…it allows me to discover who I am, my limits…

The cellist is anchored in the ground, around his instrument, there is a union of two bodies… we wrap around each other, it’s very sensual.

Pianist Nour Ayadi, and cellist Gautier Capuçon, share an intimate relationship with their instruments that surpasses physical touch. It is a relationship that nourishes their sense of identity and grounds them in a universe that spins on the axis of musical strings. 

Mysticism echoes through Sergei Rachmaninov’s 

Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19

. Reaching psychological breaking point in 1897 after a catastrophic premiere of his Symphony No. 1, hypnotherapy lulled the composer into recovery, after which emerged this sonata. Featuring close intervals, passionate single-note repetitions and bell-like sonorities, the symphony is reminiscent of the spirit of the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Mysticism and mystery are not limited to the four-movement form. Claude Debussy’s 

 (From a sketchbook) is a brief, yet seductive piano work of just fifty-five measures. Its “very slow (without rigour)” rhythm has a persuasive quality, rich with thoughtful repetition and meaningful pauses. First publicly performed by Ravel in 1910, it remains one of Debussy’s least known and most neglected works.

 lets its anxiety and torment be known. As repeated themes turn incessantly around each other, we can almost feel the anguish regurgitating through the notes. With obsessive motifs and sharp staccatos, the work departs from the slow pondering of the previous work. Written in the summer of 1904, Debussy had just left his first wife for singer Emma Bardac. Its title, he said, “is not [a reference to] Commedia dell’arte, but the tragic expression of existence.”

After ceaseless probing, we start a gradual descent into an inferno through the Devil’s Interval (a tritone). 

Après une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata)

 by Franz Liszt describes the journey of the soul into hell, beginning with descending tritones and dissonant harmonies that brings us to D minor – a key infamously associated with death in Romantic music. The second theme of this work is an enchanted chorale in the major, representing the uplifting nature of Heaven. Perhaps it is here that we witness the meditation and intimacy that both Ayadi and Capuçon experience with their instruments.

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