Michel Béroff was born in France in 1950. After graduating from the Paris conservatoire in 1966, he won the following year the first prize at the first international Olivier Messiaen piano competition. Since then, he has been considered one of the most outstanding interpreter of Messiaen’s music. He went on to play with the most prestigious orchestras around the world under the direction of conductors including Abbado, Barenboim, Bernstein, Boulez, Dohnanyi, Dorati, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gielen, Inbal, Jochum, Leinsdorf, Masur, Ozawa, Previn, Rostropovitch, Sinopoli, Solti, Tennsted, Tilson-Thomas, and Zinman. As a chamber music musician, he has been very active playing with Martha Argerich, Barbara Hendricks Jean- Philippe Collard, Augustin Dumay, Pierre Amoyal, and Lynn Harrell.

As a conductor, Béroff has been conducting the chamber orchestra de la Scala de Milano, the Russian state Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Cannes chamber orchestra, the Berkeley symphony, the Montréal youth orchestra.

Professor Emeritus at the Paris Conservatoire where he taught for 25 years, Béroff gave regular master classes in many countries, including Japan, China, USA, Italy, Germany, and France. 

An exclusive EMI artist for over 25 years, Béroff has published more than 50 recordings; among them the complete works for piano and orchestra from Liszt, Prokofieff and Stravinsky, conducted by Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur. For Deutsche Grammophon, he has recorded Ravel’s left-hand concerto with the LSO and Claudio Abbado. His latest recordings include the complete piano music from Debussy. Béroff has been awarded the “Grand Prix du Disque” five times.

As a jury member, he has served in many piano competitions, including Tchaikovsky, Van Cliburn, Leeds, Clara Haskil, Rubinstein, and Marguerite Long competitions, among others.