Yves Nat

Yves Nat studied at Conservatoire de Paris. Training under Paul Rougnon and Louis Diémer is recorded. Odette Gartenlaub, Adrienne Clostre and Jacques Loussier are recorded as having studied under Yves Nat. The recorded working language is French. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical music. Employment is recorded with Conservatoire de Paris. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Legion of Honour.

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 in the master class of the pianist Louis Diémer, receiving the class first prize in 1907. He dedicated himself to chamber music, undertook concert tours with the violinist Jacques Thibaud and George Enescu and appeared frequently in a duo with Eugène Ysaÿe. 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, 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, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. His most notable pupils include Fabienne Jacquinot, Jacqueline Eymar, Reine Gianoli, Santos Ojeda, Jean Martin, Jörg Demus, Gérard Frémy, Frederic Gevers, Geneviève Joy, Lucette Descaves, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Olive Nelson Russell, Pierre Sancan, Jean Derbès, Jacques Loussier and Jean-Marie Beaudet. He died in Paris, aged 65, in 1956.