Nelson Freire

Who is Nelson Freire?

Nelson Freire is a Brazilian classical pianist.

Freire began playing the piano when he was three years old. He replayed from memory pieces his older sister had just performed. His teachers in Brazil were Nise Obino and Lucia Branco, former students of a pupil of Liszt. For his first public recital, at the age of four, Freire chose Mozart's Sonata in A major, K. 331.

In 1957, Freire's performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, at the age of 12. He was awarded 7th place at the Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition. The jury in this competition included Marguerite Long, Guiomar Novaes and Lili Kraus. After this he left for Vienna to study with Bruno Seidlhofer. By 1964, Freire had won his first prize at the Vianna da Motta International Music Competition in Lisbon, Portugal and he also received the Dinu Lipatti Medal and the Harriet Cohen Medal in London, England.

Freire began his international career in 1959 with recitals and concerts in the major cities of Europe, the United States, Central and South America, Japan and Israel.

He has worked and toured with many of today's leading conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Eugen Jochum, Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, André Previn, David Zinman, Václav Neumann, Valery Gergiev, Rudolf Kempe, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Hans Graf, Hugh Wolff, Roberto Carnevale, Yuri Temirkanov, John Nelson, Seiji Ozawa and Riccardo Chailly.