Born in 1998 in Marche-en-Famenne (Belgium), Valère Burnon is a pianist of promising talent and growing reputation. Winner of prestigious international competitions — Épinal (1st prize, 2019), Bremen (1st prize, 2021), Viotti (2nd prize, 2023), and Queen Elisabeth (3rd prize, 2025) — he captivates audiences worldwide with passionate and detailed interpretations, marked by an assured musical maturity and a constant search for lyricism and expression.
Versatile, he possesses a rich and varied repertoire that allows him to perform as a soloist, in chamber music and with orchestras. He has notably collaborated with the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, Sinfonia Varsovia, as well as the orchestras of Brussels, Liège, Antwerp, Milan, and Metz, under the baton of Augustin Dumay, Kazushi Ono, and Marc Albrecht. He has also performed in prestigious venues such as the Philharmonic Halls of Cologne, Liège, and Luxembourg, the Salle Cortot in Paris, the Studio 4 of Flagey and Bozar (Brussels), the Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp, the Concertgebouw in Bruges, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf and the Yamaha Hall in Ginza (Tokyo).
His discography includes two recordings. His first album, released in 2020 on Azur Classical in collaboration with Belgian pianist and composer Luc Baiwir, features works by Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, and Sergei Protopopov, a little-known avant-garde Russian composer whose Preludes op. 32 had never been recorded. In 2021, he released Neoteric on Musicaphon, together with German clarinettist Andreas Hermanski, album dedicated to French composers Francis Poulenc, Ernest Chausson, Claude Debussy, and Scandinavian composers Magnus Lindberg, Arvo Pärt, and Rolf Martinsson.
Valère discovered music at the age of six through the violin, before his parents noticed that he could reproduce by ear on a keyboard everything he heard. They then enrolled him in piano lessons with Émilie Chenoy in Marche-en-Famenne, who quickly introduced him to her former teacher Marie-Paule Cornia. For nearly ten years, he studied with her at the Conservatories of Huy and later Liège. Simultaneously, he continued violin studies with Valérie Cantella at the Conservatory of Ciney and played in various orchestras, including the Terra Nova Orchestra of Namur (conducted by Étienne Rappe) and the Student Symphony Orchestra of Louvain-la-Neuve (OSEL, led by Philippe Gérard).
In 2016, he joined the class of Jean Schils and Marie-Paule Cornia at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 2018, having also worked with Étienne Rappe and François Thiry. He then pursued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Florence Millet where he obtained a master’s degree with highest distinction in 2021. The same year, he was admitted to the Accademia Incontri col Maestro in Imola, where he refined his pianistic approach under Ukrainian pianist and pedagogue Leonid Margarius, earning a Diploma Master in 2024. Since 2022, he has been Artist in Residence at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Musical Chapel in Waterloo (Belgium), benefiting from the guidance of Frank Braley, Avo Kouyoumdjian, and Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden.
Loyal to his first instrument, the violin, he has a deep attachment to chamber music repertoire and has been teaching chamber music at the Royal Conservatory of Liège since 2022, assisting his former teacher Jean-Gabriel Raelet.
Over the years, Valère has distinguished himself in numerous competitions, including:
He has also taken part in numerous masterclasses across Europe with renowned pianists and pedagogues such as Victor Chestopal, Stephen Kovacevich, Rena Shereshervskaya, Denis Kozhukhin, Claudio Martinez-Mehner, Alexander Lonquich, Andreas Staier, Bernd Goetzke, Nikolai Lugansky, Yury Martynov, and more regularly Bertrand Chamayou and Jean-Bernard Pommier.
A well-rounded artist, Valère Burnon develops a career where virtuosity, poetic sensitivity, and musical curiosity combine in the service of a demanding repertoire, always in dialogue with the audience.
