IMAS’s two artistic directors play a major role in maintaining the high standards at the Academy: by keeping a constant eye on the most renowned conservatories and international competitions, they make contact with the most promising artists of the new generation.

Blanche d’Harcourt

After graduating from the École normale
de musique de Paris, Blanche d’Harcourt further honed her skills with Jean Fassina. For a number of years now, she has performed as a duet with Italian singer Maria Fausta Gallamini, and together they have been on a number of tours in France and elsewhere. Blanche d’Harcourt has also put together a programme of German romantic melodramas with actress Marthe Keller, which they have taken on tour around Europe, the United States and Japan. At the same time, she has been developing her career as a solo pianist and chamber musician, playing with Philippe Hirshhorn, Michel Arrignon and Mitsuko Shirai. Since 1993, Blanche d’Harcourt has been artistic director of Belgium’s Rencontres Musicales Internationales d’Enghien, a chamber music festival offering concerts and master classes.

Olivier Roberti

The Belgian pianist Olivier Roberti studied first at the Royal Brussels Conservatory and then at the Geneva Conservatory, where he was awarded a first prize for virtuosity. He continued his studies with Edouard Vercelli in Switzerland, with Carlo Zecchi in Italy, and then with Léon Fleisher in Baltimore in the United States. He has performed with various ensembles, including the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Czech National Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra, recording the Haydn piano concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Mendelssohn concertos with the Czech National Orchestra. Olivier Roberti has also performed with Michel Arrignon, David Grimal, Polina Leschenko and Matthias Buchholz, among many others. In 1993, he founded the Rencontres Musicales Internationales d’Enghien in Belgium, and has been a director of the festival ever since.