Claude Helffer

Claude Helffer (18 June 1922 – 27 October 2004) was a French pianist noted particularly for his advocacy of 20th-century music. He was born in Paris, and began piano lessons at the age of five and from the age of ten until the outbreak of World War II he studied with Robert Casadesus. During the War he entered the élite École polytechnique and fought for the Resistance (in the Maquis du Vercors). After the War he studied theory and composition with René Leibowitz. He made his début in Paris in 1948 and from 1954 appeared regularly in the concerts of the Domaine musical. He married the noted ethnomusicologist, Mireille Helffer, whom he met at the Lycée Molière two years earlier, in June 1946.