Renaud Capuçon hraje a diriguje (R)

French violinist Renaud Capuçon, older brother of cellist Gautier Capuçon, will present himself in Prague this time not only as a soloist, but also as a conductor. For many years, his rare instrument has been a violin from the Guarneri family workshop, on which Isaac Stern played. A quarter of a century ago, Renaud started as concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, led by conductor Claudio Abbad. Since then, he has developed into an international star. His most recent recordings include the album Au Cinema with arrangements of musical themes from the silver screen and the CD Un violin à Paris containing a range of arrangements for violin and piano. In recent years, the artist has also devoted himself more to conducting, since 2021 he is the conductor of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has already recorded a CD dedicated to the music of Arvo Pärt. In Switzerland, he also founded and runs Festival Les Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, and is the director of the southern French Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence. Capuçon's Prague program consists of two compositions by Gabriel Fauré, Saint-Saëns' pupil and later teacher Maurice Ravel, assistant organist Charles-Marie Widor at St. Sulpicius in Paris and subsequently organist and choirmaster at the Church of the Madeleine. It is an unfinished Violin Concerto and a suite from the music for the play Pelléas and Mélisande by Nobel Prize winner for literature Maurice Maeterlinck. The composers Jean Sibelius, Arnold Schönberg and Claude Debussy later dealt with the same theme. The program concludes with Scottish Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

Program:

• Gabriel Fauré: Violin Concerto
• Gabriel Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande, suite
• Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Symphony no. 3 "Scottish"

Public dress rehearsal will take place on 9 December 2024 from 10:00. The meeting with the artists before the concert will take place from 18:30 in Talich's lounge.