Bernard Ringeissen

Bernard Ringeissen (born 15 May 1934) is a French classical pianist.

He was born in Paris in 1934. His first teacher, at age 7, was Georges de Lausnay. He entered the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieure de Musique in 1947, aged 12, and won the Premier Prix when he was sixteen. He had further study with Marguerite Long and Jacques Février. In 1953 he temporarily retired from public performance, to focus on music competition.

In 1954 he won equal 2nd Prize with Sergio Scopelliti at the Alfredo Casella Competition in Naples. He also won the International Music Performance Competition in Geneva that year. In 1955 he won 4th prize at the 5th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw; then equal 2nd Prize with Dimitri Bashkirov at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition (no 1st Prize was awarded that year). In 1962 he won 1st Prize at the Rio de Janeiro International Competition and the Villa-Lobos Special Prize for his interpretation of Brazilian music.

He has performed widely and served on competition juries in many countries. He teaches in Rueil-Malmaison, and gives master-classes at the Salzburg Mozarteum and at the International Summer Seminar in Weimar.

His recordings include the complete piano works of Camille Saint-Saëns and of Igor Stravinsky, and many works by Charles-Valentin Alkan, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy (with Noël Lee) and the Russian masters. He has also recorded Francis Poulenc's Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra, with Gabriel Tacchino and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra under Georges Prêtre.