World-Class
Pianist Devoted to Her Music and Her Wolves
French-born classical pianist Hélène Grimaud, a U.S. resident since 1991, made her first recording at the age of 15 and won the French equivalent of a Grammy at age 16. Today, the 30-year-old artist balances her acclaimed international performing and recording career with a less public avocation: raising wolves at her Westchester County, New York home.
Grimaud, who has also modeled in Vogue for good measure, says she enjoys the Yamaha pianos she often plays in concert for their "warmth of sound, range of color and fine sense of weight." At home, she practices on a Yamaha upright that’s older than she is. Her playing has been called "stormy, passionate and intuitive," and she regularly attracts overflow crowds.
She studied animal behavior for two years in order to become certified to welcome two adult wolves and two cubs into her life. Her aim is twofold: to show people that wolves are highly socialized animals that don’t deserve their savage reputation, and to provide opportunities for scientific study. She frequently welcomes veterinarians and biologists into her suburban enclosure.
Living
with wolves is more a question of respect than affection, she explains,
and it requires her to observe a complex system of rules. She feels comfortable
feeding them with her priceless fingers, for example, but would never
turn her back on them. "I’m certain that cohabitation is possible
between wolves and man," she told Paris Match in 1998. "In
the end, being around my wolves is an extension of my artistic life. It’s
an original enrichment that resounds, I’m sure, in the way I interpret
the works I choose."
Grimaud’s most recent album, a live recording of Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4, Sonata for Piano No. 30 Op. 109 and Sonata for Piano No. 31 Op. 110 with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Masur, was released in 1999 on Teldec Records. She won a Grand Prix du Disque at the age of 16 for her recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2, and she has also recorded the Gershwin Concerto in F and the Ravel Concerto in G with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony.
Photo credit: J. Henry Fair
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