EUROPEAN MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013
Richard CLAYDEMAN, piano
With participation of Daniel Chiampolini, percussion
Classic FM Radio Orchestra

Richard Clayderman has done something that no other French performer ever did – establish an international career as the best sold musician and concert performer.
Born Philippe Pages on 28 December 1953 he takes up the piano when still at the beginning of his life. His father who was a piano teacher lays the foundations on his future success and starts teaching him how to play at a very early age. Rumour has it that when six Clayderman was able to read music better than his native French.
The turning point in his live is in 1976 when he receives a phone call from Olivier Toussaint, a famous French music producer, who, along with his partner Paul de Senneville, has been searching for a pianist to record a piano ballad. Seneville had composed this ballad in the honour of his newly born daughter Adeline. This is the beginning of an exceptionally successful career and since then Richard Clayderman’s intrinsic style at the piano has brought him the glory of a super star all over the world. Today he has behind him 1200 songs and as a German journalist says: “for sure, he has contributed to the popularisation of the piano across the world more than anybody else from Beethoven onwards”. Richard Clayderman creates a “new romantic” style with a repertoire combining his “trade-mark” originals with classic and pop sounding. He realises huge sales of records worldwide amounting to 90 million copies as per the most recent data and the incredible 276 golden and 70 platinum CDs.