‘David Grimal has a formidable appetite for music and intellectual and artistic mastery of the repertoires selected.’
Gilles Macassar – Télérama
The violinist David Grimal, equally committed to the solo and chamber repertories, appears in the world’s leading classical music venues, including Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Zurich Tonhalle, Lincoln Center in New York, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the National Concert Hall in Taiwan and Bozar in Brussels.
David Grimal performs regularly as a soloist with such orchestras as the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Russian National Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia, the Orchestra of the Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon and Sinfonia Varsovia. Among the conductors with whom he has appeared are Christoph Eschenbach, Heinrich Schiff, Lawrence Foster, Emmanuel Krivine, Mikhail Pletnev, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Peter Eötvös, Andris Nelsons, Jukka Pekka Saraste and Christian Arming.
Many composers have dedicated works to him, including Marc-André Dalbavie, Brice Pauset, Thierry Escaich, Lisa Lim, Jean-François Zygel, Alexandre Gasparov, Victor Kissine, Fuminori Tanada, Ivan Fedele, Philippe Hersant, Anders Hillborg, Oscar Bianchi, Guillaume Connesson and Frédéric Verrières.
For the past ten years he has devoted part of his career to developing Les Dissonances, of which he is artistic director. In this laboratory of ideas, conceived as a collective of musicians, David Grimal and his friends experience music as a joy rediscovered and tackle the symphonic repertory in the spirit of chamber music.
David Grimal has recorded for the EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Aeon, Naïve, Transart and Dissonances Records labels. His recordings have received acclaim in the press, with such awards as BBC Music Magazine Choice, Choc de l’Année in Classica, Arte Sélection and ffff in Télérama.
A sought-after chamber musician, he is a guest at the leading international festivals and chooses to appear regularly in piano trio formation with Philippe Cassard and Anne Gastinel and in the string quartet repertory with his friends of the Quatuor les Dissonances: Hans-Peter Hofmann, David Gaillard and Xavier Phillips.
As if in natural prolongation of this urge to share with others, he has created ‘L’Autre Saison’, a season of concerts for the homeless in Paris. David Grimal was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2008. He teaches the violin at the Musikhochschule in Saarbrücken and plays the ‘Ex-Roederer’ Stradivarius of 1710 with a bow by François-Xavier Tourte.
