İdil Biret (born 21 November 1941) is a Turkish concert pianist. Education Biret began her lessons at the age of five with , who had studied under Nadia Boulanger and Alfred Cortot. When she was seven, the Turkish parliament enacted a special law which enabled her to study abroad and so she studied at the Paris Conservatory in France under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger. She graduated with three prizes at the age of 15. She continued her education with Alfred Cortot and Wilhelm Kempff. Musical career She was already interested in music at the age of 2 and started to play Bachs preludes at the age of 4. When she was 7 or 8 years old she used to listen to Brahms. Later on she discovered Sergei Rachmaninoff. From the age of 16, Biret played as a soloist with the most distinguished orchestras in the world, including the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France and the Sydney Symphony. She collaborated with eminent conductors such as Hermann Scherchen, Pierre Monteux, Erich Leinsdorf, Rudolf Kempe, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Aaron Copland, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Charles Mackerras, Jean Fournet, José Serebrier, Moshe Atzmon, Antoni Wit and Hiroyuki Iwaki. Biret also gave concerts at the festivals of Berlin, Montreal, Istanbul, Dubrovnik, Montpellier, Nohant, Persepolis, Royan and Athens. Idil Biret had her US concert premier at Symphony Hall in Boston under Erich Leinsdorf on Friday, November 22, 1963. Just before she was to play (Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #3), Maestro Leinsdorf addressed the audience, saying that "we have just heard on the wireless that the President of the United States has been the victim of an assassination!" After the audience got over the shock, the orchestral management and players agreed to proceed with Miss Biret's performance. She has been a jury member at several piano competitions: Van Cliburn (US), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Montreal (Canada), Liszt (Weimar, Germany) and Busoni (Italy). Her numerous recordings (more than 100 to date) for labels such as EMI, Decca, Atlantic, Finnadar and Naxos include the Saint-Saëns' piano concertos n°2, 4, 5, world-premiere recording of Liszt's transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies (EMI 6LP/1986), complete solo piano works and concertos of Chopin (15CD/1992), of Brahms (12CD/1997), Rachmaninoff (10CD/2000) and the piano transcription