Paul Montag

French pianist Paul Montag is a performer and educator who has toured and taught classes as far from home as Vietnam. He is also active as a chamber music player. Montag was born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1982. He took up the piano at age four and progressed rapidly enough that in two years, he was able to enter the National Regional Conservatory of Boulogne-Billancourt, studying with Louis-Claude Thirion and completing his program there at 11 with a unanimous first prize from examiners. He moved on to the Paris Conservatory (CNSM), studying piano with Jean-François Heisser, Marie-Josèphe Jude, and Rena Shereshevskaya, as well as chamber music with Daria Hovora and Michaël Hentz. Montag also earned a pair of certificates from the École Normale de Musique in Paris and rounded out his education with master classes from Anne Queffélec, Jean-Claude Pennetier, and Paul Badura-Skoda, among others. Awards from the Cziffra Foundation and the Foundation of France set him on a round of festival appearances, in Colmar, Milan, and Porto, among many other places. Montag has given recitals at major Parisian halls, including the Salle Pleyel and Salle Cortot, as well as Lincoln Center in New York, and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Montag has toured widely, performing and giving master classes in Japan and Vietnam. An enthusiastic chamber player and accompanist, he has teamed with such major artists as Raphaël Sévère, Rolando Villazón, and Felicity Lott. Montag has favored 20th century music as a recording artist, making several recordings for France Musique and Nippon Television in Japan, including an album of the early piano music of Hindemith. He has backed singers in the songs of Albert Roussel, Charles-Marie Widor, and Félicien David, and in 2020, he joined Sévère for the clarinet-and-piano recital On Tour. Montag is a professor of chamber music at the École Normale de Musique in Paris as well as of accompaniment at the Conservatoire de Ville d'Avray.
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