Frank Braley was born in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, in 1968. He began studying the piano at the age of four, and made his debut at ten with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. Although his talent was already obvious, at the University he chose to specialize in Sciences, but shortly after, when he was eighteen, he entered the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied with Pascal Devoyon and Jacques Rouvier. In 1991, at twenty-two, he participated in the Queen Elisabeth competition and obtained the First and the Public prizes: his career was then officially launched.
Since 1991, Frank Braley has performed in the most prestigious concert halls of Europe, as well as in Japan, in the United States and in Canada. He has played with the Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre de Paris, the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Radio de Berlin, the Tokyo Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Charles Dutoit, Armin Jordan, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Neville Marriner, Yutaka Sado and Kurt Masur are some of the conductors with whom he has regularly performed.
In addition to his soloist career, Braley also plays chamber music, performing notably with Renaud Capuçon, Maria João Pires, Augustin Dumay, Emmanuel Pahud, Roel Dieltiens and the Ensemble Explorations.
His repertoire includes a fair number of French works (Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Poulenc among others), as well as a disparate choice of compositions by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Dvorák, Richard Strauss, and Gershwin.
In 2004 Braley performed the complete sonatas by Beethoven at La Roque d’Anthéron Festival, in Paris, Rome and Brazil, and the following year in Bilbao, Lisbonne and Tokyo too. More recently, he recorded Beethoven’s ten Sonatas for violin and piano with Renaud Capuçon for Virgin Classics (2010). He also records for Harmonia Mundi and RCA.
