Dumont Kunstreiseführer

Ballades and Impromptus. Among the most suggestive of the titles Chopin bestowed on his works, they announce the poetic charge of two very different and contrasting genres. Where the Ballades are expansive and dense, with their dramatic power rooted in epic and legend and their bright or sombre hues, the Impromptus are light and concise, elusive and ephemeral, airy, fragile and volatile in texture, and with delicate touches of colour that spread joy, effervescent or serene, on the fleet wings of their melodies. These two aspects are but one at heart, though, in their essential romanticism, their lyricism and their roots in the fertile soil of improvisation, inseparable from the powerful inspiration that brought them into being.

Atmospheric salon pieces and sonatas from the composer’s late period: Marc Coppey invites you on a promenade through Fauré’s works for cello. François Dumont accompanies him on an Érard grand piano which was very close to the composer’s heart – “Fauré authentique”!

Ransom Wilson has long been recognized internationally as one of the greatest flutists of his generation. After graduation from the Juilliard School in 1973, he spent a year in Paris as a private student of Jean-Pierre Rampal. As flute soloist, he has appeared in concert with some of the greatest orchestras and artists of our time, including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony, Frederica von Stade, Jessye Norman, Thomas Hampson, Susan Graham, Dolora Zajick, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Hilary Hahn, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Sir James Galway, and many others. François Dumontis a prize winner of the most prestigious international competitions: the Queen Elisabeth Competition (Brussels), the Chopin Competition (Warsaw), the Cleveland International Competition in the United States and the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland.

People On Sunday is an original soundtrack to the 1930 silent film variously known as Menschen am Sonntag, Les Hommes le Dimanche and People On Sunday. The film is a key work of interwar German cinema, based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder.
Part documentary, part fiction, People On Sunday follows a group of characters going about their business in Weimar-era Berlin over one weekend and shows normal life in Germany before dictatorship.
Domenique Dumont was invited to compose the score for a special screening and live performance at the Les Arcs Film Festival in the French Alps in December 2019…