Yves Philippe Avit Nat (29 December 1890 – 31 August 1956) was a French

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and composer.

Biography

Nat was born in Béziers and showed an early aptitude for both piano and composition. By the age of seven he was allowed to improvise each Sunday at the organ of Béziers' cathedral during mass. At the age of ten he conducted his own ''Fantasie'' for orchestra. Both Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns encouraged him to pursue his studies at the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

in the master class of the pianist

Louis Diémer Louis Joseph Diémer (14 February 1843 – 21 December 1919) was a French pianist and composer. He was the founder of the Société des Instruments Anciens in the 1890s, and also gave recitals on the harpsichord. His output as a composer was exte ...

, receiving the class first prize in 1907. He dedicated himself to chamber music, undertook concert tours with the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

ist

Jacques Thibaud Jacques Thibaud (; 27 September 18801 September 1953) was a French violinist. Biography Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won th ...

and

George Enescu George Enescu (; – 4 May 1955), known in France as Georges Enesco, was a Romanian composer, violinist, conductor and teacher. Regarded as one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history, Enescu is featured on the Romanian five lei. Biogr ...

and appeared frequently in a duo with

Eugène Ysaÿe Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (; 16 July 185812 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar". Legend of the Ysaÿe violin Eugène Ysa� ...

. In 1911 he made the first of a number of tours of the United States. He was mobilised in the course of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, around which time he produced the first of his published compositions, the ''Six Préludes pour Piano'' and the ''Six chansons à Païney''. In the years which followed, Nat toured and performed extensively. However, he retired from concert life in 1937 to devote himself to teaching in the Paris Conservatoire and composing. He emerged from this retirement in 1953 to play a small number of highly successful concerts. The last of these, on 4 February 1954 was the première of his own Piano Concerto, with the Orchestre National de la Radio-diffusion Française under the conductorship of

Pierre Dervaux Pierre Dervaux (born 3 January 1917 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France; died 20 February 1992 in Marseilles, France) was a French operatic conductor, composer, and pedagogue. At the Conservatoire de Paris, he studied counterpoint and harmony with Marcel ...

, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. His most notable pupils include Fabienne Jacquinot,

Jacqueline Eymar Jacqueline Eymar (23 June 1922 – 6 December 2008) was a French classical pianist. Biography Born in Nice, a pupil of the pianist and composer Yves Nat, Eymar had a rich post-war career as a pianist and chamber musician. Eymar has interprete ...

, Reine Gianoli, Santos Ojeda,

Jean Martin Jean Martin (6 March 1922 – 2 February 2009Jean Martin
''The Guardian'', 12 February 2009

Jörg Demus Jörg Wolfgang Demus (2 December 1928 – 16 April 2019) was an Austrian classical pianist who appeared internationally and made many recordings. He was also a composer and a lecturer at music academies. In composition and playing, he focused on ...

, Frederic Gevers,

Geneviève Joy Geneviève Joy (; 4 October 1919 – 27 November 2009) was a French classical and modernist pianist who, at the end of World War II in 1945, formed a critically acclaimed duo-piano partnership with Jacqueline Robin which lasted for forty-five yea ...

, Lucette Descaves, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Pierre Sancan and Jean-Marie Beaudet. He died in Paris, aged 65, in 1956.

Repertoire and reputation

His repertoire particularly covered the works of

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...

and

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...

. Between 1951 and 1955, he recorded all 32 of the

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

piano sonatas.Complete Beethoven piano sonatas
on YouTube For a French pianist of his age, this recorded repertoire was unusual. Most French pianists who developed artistically in the years during and after the First World War tended to champion French composers and to avoid the staple German repertoire. No recordings survive of Nat's extensive French repertoire. Nat's strong technique and rich sonority suited the larger-scale Beethoven sonatas admirably. However, he was far from a bravura pianist - indeed, although his concerto has some formidable technical difficulties, it avoids the classic virtuoso approach, and instead tries to be what Nat himself described in a radio interview as a concerto for ''piano within the orchestra''. He summed up his approach as ''Tout pour la musique; rien pour le piano'', which might be translated as "Everything for the music, nothing for the piano". His compositions reveal a composer who has a talent for framing simple melodic lines in imaginative harmonies, best illustrated by the slow movement of his piano concerto. His orchestral style is reminiscent of the style of

Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

, with a notable fondness for

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

instruments. Beside the concerto and solo piano works, he composed chamber music and an

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...

Bibliography

Yves Nat, un musicien de légende
by Mona Reverchon (conversations with Chantal Auber) 2006, éditions Le Bord de L'eau.
Yves Nat, Notes et Carnets
by Yves Nat (notes by Nat on interprétation, thoughts and letters) new edition 2006, Alba éditions. * ''Yves Nat, du pianiste compositeur au poète pédagogue'', Claude Jouanna, Editions L'Harmattan, Univers musical, , November 2005, 248 pages

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nat, Yves 1890 births 1956 deaths People from Béziers 20th-century French male classical pianists Conservatoire de Paris alumni Conservatoire de Paris faculty French classical composers French male classical composers 20th-century classical composers French music educators Piano pedagogues Burials at Passy Cemetery 20th-century French composers