Just before the start of the 2026/27 season Hélène Mercier joined Renaud Capuçon, Pascal Moraguès and Kian Soltani at the Salzburg Festival to perform Olivier Messiaen`s one-hour long Quatuor pour la fin du temps. “One might finally hold one’s breath when, in praise of Jesus` immortality, Mercier and Capuçon, almost otherworldly each made their instruments sing in their great solos” (Bachtrack). Renaud Capucon is also one of the soloists alongside Edgar Moreau who are joining her and Krzysztof Urbański for Beethoven`s Tripel concerto in December in Bern.

In March 2026 Hélène Mercier`s latest CD with chamber music partner Daniel Lozakovich titled Lost to the Worl received highest praise from the press. The prestigious Gramophone magazine ranked it as among the TOP SIX in their quarterly retrospect and editor’s choice: “Hélène Mercier provides sensitive, unobtrusive piano support, especially tender in the appropriately titled ‘La chanson d’Hélène’ by Philippe Sarde, taken from Claude Sautet’s 1970 film Les choses de la vie.” The list of her regular chamber music partners also include Gautier Capucon, Truls Mørk, Laurent Korcia, Henri Demarquette, Boris Berezovsky, Frank Braley, Alain Lefèvre, Cyprien Katsaris, Khatia Buniatishvili, Jonas Kaufmann, Julian Rachlin as well as legends like Mstislav Rostropovich, Ivry Gitlis, Vladimir Spivakov and Henryk Szeryng.

Hélène Mercier received the Diapason d’or as well as The Penguin Guide’s highest distinction, The Rosette, for past acclaimed recordings such as her CD of the Vaughan Williams Concerto for two pianos together with childhood friend and longstanding duo partner Louis Lortie. Both born and raised in Montreal, their musical partnership goes back to the 1980s, developing a musical intimacy present throughout their wide-ranging repertoire. As a duo, they recorded 8 albums for Chandos including the pillars of the repertoire for four hands and two pianos, from Mozart and Schubert to Ravel. Their first Debussy album was released in 2022 and the second volume of integral works for 2 pianos 4 hands followed suit in June 2026, again earning the highest praise of the Grammophone magazine. With orchestra, they recorded Poulenc Concerto for two pianos with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner, with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Saint-Saens` Le Carnival de Animaux under Neeme Järvi.

Hélène Mercier participates frequently in prestigious festivals, among which those held in Aix-en-Provence, Menton, Colmar, Evian, Reims, Lille, the Festival du Paques, Radio-France in Montpellier and Echternach International Music Festival in Luxembourg. She has performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, at Wigmore Hall and the South Bank Centre in London as well as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Gewandhaus Leipzig and Dresden Music Festival, the Rudolfinum in Prague, the Megaron in Athens, the Flagey in Brussels and the Villa Medici, Teatro Dal Verme, Music Academy of Sienna, Teatro Comunale of Ferrara, the Lingotto and the Teatro Regio in Italy. She has been a soloist with the orchestras in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal under Charles Dutoit and Trevor Pinnock, and the New Japan Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, the Orchestre de Paris under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, and appeared with the Prague Philharmonia, with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony amongst others. In China, she performed with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra conducted by Long Yu. In Korea, she recently performed under the direction of Mikhaïl Pletnev.
Hélène Mercier began her piano studies at the age of six and quickly won re-cognition by getting first honours at the Quebec and Canadian Music Competitions in piano solo and piano-violin as well as an award at the Prague International Chamber Music Competition. At the age of fifteen, she entered Dieter Weber’s class at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She later studied at the Juilliard School in New York with Sasha Gorodnitski, after having been awarded a scholarship subsequent to her admissions audition. In Paris she studied with Pierre Sancan of the Conservatoire National Supérieur, and with Germaine Mounier at the Ecole Normale de Musique. She also worked with Maria Curcio, Stanislav Neuhaus, and in chamber music, with Gidon Kremer and Henryk Szeryng

Hélène Mercier is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
26/27 season

General Manager (Asia, Australia, Europe)
International Classical Music Management (ICM management)
101 West End Avenue, 16G
New York, NY 10023
Email: Klara Min
Kmin@icmmanag.com