The first source of Dana Ciocarlie's piano-playing was the Romanian piano school wherefrom also have emerged Clara Haskil and Dinu Lipatti. After a first degree in Bucarest, she then later studied in Paris with Victoria Melki at the Ecole Normale de Musique and attended Dominique Merlet's and Georges Pludermacher's classes at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique. Her meeting with the German pianist Christian Zacharias was a decisive factor for her career, stimulating her to delve deeply into Franz Schubert's piano music.
Endowed with a quick-witted and mercurial temperament, combined with generosity and commitment, Dana Ciocarlie has a vast repertoire ranging from Johann-Sebastian Bach to contemporary composers. Some of these, including Karol Beffa, Frédéric Verrières, Nicolas Bacri and Helena Winkelman have written specially for her. She is also recognised as one of the major interpreters of Horatiu Radulescu. Her experience and her talent were rewarded with numerous prizes in prestigious competitions: a second prize at the Robert Schumann International Competition in Zwickau, the Sandor Vegh Special Prize at the Geza Anda Competition in Zurich, the Pro Musicis International Prize, the Young Concert Artist European Auditions Award in Leipzig, and a prize at the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Italy. This January 2017, she had been endorsed Yamaha Official Artist.
Dana Ciocarlie currently teaches at the faculty of the Lyon's Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (National Academy of Music in Lyon) and at Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris.
Her numerous recitals and concerts with orchestras throughout the world have taken her to the United States, Canada, Russia, Indonesia, Philippines and China. She has performed in most European countries and in France - her country of residence—, concerts have taken her to the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Cité de la Musique, the Orsay Museum, the Auditorium du Louvre, in La Roque d'Anthéron International Piano Festival, La Folle Journée in Nantes. Among her favorite musical partners figure the conductors Lawrence Foster, Yoav Talmi, Frédéric Chaslin, pianists Christian Zacharias, Anne Quéffelec, Philippe Bianconi, violonists Ayako Tanaka, Gilles Apap, Nicolas Dautricourt, Laurent Korcia, the violoncellists Alexandre Kniazev and Marc Coppey, french horn player David Guerrier and the string quartets Parisii and Talich. She is a much appreciated guest of France Musique radio channel, where she had a regular emission going with musicologist Jean Pierre Derrien between 2001 and 2015: it was on the piano works of Schumann. Her numerous recordings were highly acclaimed by the specialised musical press who recognised in her the humility of the great and compared her musicality even to that of Wilhelm Kempff and Clara Haskil. In 2017, her « live recording » of all Schumann piano works (15 CD's) will released in 2017.
In June 2017, she is the artist invited in Japan for the first edition of the « Piano aux Jacobins » Festival which will be held both in Tokyo and Gifu.
