Not quite 10 years since she passed away, Brigitte Engerer’s memory lives on in the minds of her admirers.

Born in Tunis in 1952, she began her career by locking herself in the bathroom of her family’s apartment to play a toy piano. Her precocious talent soon attracted attention, and she attended the Conservatoire of Paris before being awarded a prize by the Long-Thibaud competition jury.

In 1970, her iconoclastic and adventurous spirit led her to the USSR to study with Stanislas Neuhaus. There she became the most Russian of French pianists, managing to blend the diametrically opposed styles of those two schools.

Upon her return from Russia, Brigitte Engerer naturally found her place amongst the greatest performers of her generation. But her infallibility in even the most formidable romantic concertos, and her radiant stage presence could not mask the more tortured, refined and sensitive sides of her character.

Godmother to the world of French piano, she helped launched numerous careers, including Boris Berezovsky’s.

Nathalie Renvoisé has written a first biography that is as moving and passionate as the beloved artist Brigitte Engerer herself was.

A psychologist and a musician, Nathalie Renvoisé focuses on the role of music and art activities in hospitals. That was how she first met Brigitte Engerer, to whom she has devoted her first book.