Catherine Collard was a French classical pianist known for her interpretations of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy and Franz Joseph Haydn. Born on August 11, 1947, she studied at the Paris Conservatoire and, over the course of her career, performed works by Schumann, Brahms, Debussy and Haydn, as well as Johann Sebastian Bach, Gilbert Amy, César Franck, Edvard Grieg, Olivier Messiaen, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Franz Liszt and Arnold Schoenberg. In her early years, she recorded for the label Erato, now owned by Warner Classics, who reissued some of the early recordings on labels Erato and Apex. In 1998, five years after her death, the label Ina compiled a collection entitled ‘Les Jeunes Années’. In the last five years of her life, on the well known French pianist Bruno Rigutto's advice, Catherine Collard recorded twelve albums for the label Lyrinx. Catherine Collard’s death, on October 10, 1993, prevented her from completing the work she had begun with Lyrinx, but the enthusiastic reception of her latest luminous interpretations of Haydn (a three-volume collection of Piano Sonatas), Mozart, Franck and Schumann, have restored her place among the great interpreters of the 20th century.