Renaud

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister

Portrait du chanteur libertaire, révolté et gauchiste. De son enfance bourgeoise aux dérives de l'alcool en passant par l'engagement en mai 1968, l'auteur retrace toutes les étapes d'une vie de passion, évoque la sensibilité et la tendresse de Renaud et montre sa force à dépasser les épreuves afin de poursuivre sa carrière. …

Born in Chambéry in 1976, Renaud Capuçon studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris with Gérard Poulet and Veda Reynolds. He was awarded first prize for chamber music in 1992 and first prize for violin with a special distinction from the jury in 1993. In 1995 he won the Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Then he studied with Thomas Brandis in Berlin, and later with Isaac Stern. Invited by Claudio Abbado in 1997, he continued his musical experiences as konzertmeister of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester during three summers with Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Moest and of course Claudio Abbado. In 2000 he was nominated “Rising Star” and “New talent of the Year” (French Victoires de la Musique), in 2005 “Soliste instrumental de l’année”, also by the French Victoires de la Musique, and in 2006 “Prix Georges Enesco” (Sacem).

The Capuçons, violinist Renaud and cellist Gautier, joined by pianist Frank Braley, enter into the gauzily shimmering, atmospheric world of Ravel’s Piano Trio in a sensitive performance that’s suggestively haunting in the first movement, effervescently bubbling in the second, profoundly reflective in the third, and imposingly declamatory in the fourth. The clean but somewhat low-level recorded sound underscores the spirit of the collaboration, never assigning undue prominence to any of the instruments. The ensemble may sound a bit distant, and perhaps for that reason a bit detached in the first three movements (as, for example, the Beaux Arts Trio, always vibrant, never did); but that sense of space hardly prevents their ferocious intensity from emerging temerariously in the finale.