The Capuçon brothers are ready for the big screen

The Capuçon brothers are ready for the big screen

So how do a pair of virtuosos known for their musical sensitivity, expressiveness and creative desire to work with people who they like and trust perceive the idea of invasive cameras projecting their preshow preparations and high art live to tens of thousands of moviegoers who pass by the concession stand?

Interviewed in the cafe of an old-school Parisian hotel recently, Renaud's response was notably down to earth: "Beyond the magnificent music, the idea of people eating popcorn and drinking Cokes and watching us — a couple of French guys who show up in Los Angeles to play Brahms — is very exciting."

His younger brother lauded efforts to modernize live classical performances that have changed little in recent decades. "People are sitting there and playing. It can be beautiful, but it isn't spectacular like an opera or a film. There are no special effects. But now you can film it and give the event a [storytelling] rhythm," Gautier explained. "This is a completely modern way of looking at classical music. There won't be different lighting or a glittering [disco] ball, but the audience will see backstage before the concert, and after, the adrenaline rising."

Despite their youth — Renaud is 35, Gautier is 30 — they already have a great deal of experience in their very traditional milieu.

Renaud took up the violin when he was 4. He explained that he immediately took pleasure from collaborating with other students who lived near his family in Chambéry in the French Alps, and that he felt strangely focused on the instrument while still in preschool. "Maybe I would have been as interested if those courses were pottery," he said with a laugh.

He began with Vivaldi. "By the time I was 8, I knew I wanted to keep the violin with me," Renaud said, before recounting the story of a record seller who was stunned to hear a child's voice asking for the latest Stravinsky recording and seeing the top of the head of an 8-year-old boy across the counter.

Gautier's relationship to music was more individual, and it began later in life — when he was nearly 5. "I adored it from the start," Gautier said of his first encounter with the cello. "I loved the sonorities, the timbre." A broad-minded music teacher cultivated the boy's intuitive love of the instrument and told him that classical and chamber music "has to swing." That advice, Gautier said, serves him even now. "I didn't wake up one day and say, 'I want to be a soloist,' but I knew when I was 10 or 12 that I would spend my life with this instrument."

The brothers did not grow up playing music together because of their age gap and because Renaud left home when he was 14 to study at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, but they began to collaborate after Gautier turned 15. They have performed numerous concerts together, including a U.S. recital tour, and have released half a dozen recordings, including a DVD of cello and violin interpretations of 20th century compositions, "Face à Face."

Brahms is particularly special to the brothers because his music has accompanied them almost from the start. Recently, they recounted, the brothers came across an old Brahms Piano Trios album that Renaud gave Gautier when he was just 8 or 9. Isaac Stern played his Guarneri del Gesù violin that was made in 1737. In a poetic twist, the brothers later recorded that same Brahms Piano Trios — with Renaud performing with that very instrument. (The Banca Svizzera Italiana purchased it for him.) "What I love about this violin is how it resonates with Brahms' harmonies," Renaud said. "When you have it in your hands, it is history that you are playing."

The Capuçons, who live in France and who are each bringing up a young child, relish collaborative musicianship and a trust-filled ambiance akin to what many top-level stage and film actors seek. "During a concert, you need to know that you can take every risk. You must feel so secure that you don't think about failure. If you think, 'Will the other musician go along with this?,' it is over," says Renaud. "But when it is fluid, you have a sense of boundless liberty. For us, we need a human bond or with people with whom there is no tension."

They said they find just such an atmosphere with Dudamel, who Renaud said is "emblematic of a new generation in the classical music world. There is something 'Bernstein-esque' about him." Renaud first played with Dudamel when he was a teenager in the conductor's native Venezuela as well as in Paris and Salzburg. Of the conductor's remarkable energy, Renaud says that performing with Dudamel is like receiving "a vitamin C injection. Gustavo gives himself completely to the audience."

"Dudamel lights up a room when he works," interjected Gautier, who collaborated on a Salzburg Festival performance (of Beethoven's Triple Concerto) with his brother, pianist Martha Argerich and Dudamel. "What is most fascinating — aside from him being an extraordinary musician and having a stunning physicality and technique — is the glimmer in his eyes. When I first saw him work, there was a light there, a joy to be on stage. It illuminates a room, and the public feels it.

"Sharing music with other musicians is very personal. We give our all, we share," says Gautier, known for his musical passion as well as the lush emotion he draws from his cello. "It is a moment of great intimacy. It is something very deep. You can't just share that sort of intimacy with just any musician."

But, they said, they will be happy to share it with filmgoers around North America.

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EMI CLASSICS CELEBRATES HAT TRICK OF AWARDS AT CLASSIC BRIT AWARDS

EMI CLASSICS CELEBRATES HAT TRICK OF AWARDS AT CLASSIC BRIT AWARDS

ALISON BALSOM CROWNED FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

DOUBLE NOMINEE ANTONIO PAPPANO WINS MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR

EMI Classics celebrates a hat trick of artist awards at the 2011 Classic BRIT Awards, which took place at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 12^th May 2011.

Acclaimed British trumpeter Alison Balsom was crowned Female Artist of the Year for her Italian Concertos album, an award she also won in 2009. Alison appeared on the red carpet and in the hall for her performance dressed in stunning gowns by Armani and dripping in £1 million worth of diamonds courtesy of Van Cleef & Arpels. Next month sees Alison Balsom head back into the studio to record her forthcoming album Modern Trumpet Concertos, due for release by EMI Classics in January 2012. The album will include a world premiere recording of a brand new specially commissioned work Seraph by James MacMillan CBE.

British conductor Antonio Pappano, who is Music Director of the Royal Opera House, scooped the prestigious Male Artist of the Year award for his recent recording of Rossini’s Stabat Mater, recorded with his Roman orchestra and choir, the Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with star soloists Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and Ildebrando D'Arcangelo. This week also saw Antonio Pappano pick up a prestigious RPS Award for Creative Communication awarded for his BBC series Opera Italia. His next recording, the full version of Rossini’s opera William Tell will be released in July to coincide with his performance of the same work at this year’s BBC Proms.

Young Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang picked up the Newcomer Award for her debut release with EMI Classics, Prokofiev and Sibelius Violin Concertos. Vilde, a protégée of Anne-Sophie Mutter, has won a number of major prizes, among them a Fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in 2007 and the 2009 Norwegian Soloist Prize. She plays a Jean Baptiste Vuillaume violin, on loan from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Freundeskreis Stiftung, which has supported Vilde Frang since 2003. She signed an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics in 2009 and has released two solo albums.

Eric Dingman, President of EMI Classics Global commented “On behalf of all of my colleagues at EMI we offer our sincere congratulations to all of the nominated and awarded artists at the 2011 Classic BRIT Awards. We are especially proud and thankful for the terrific work by Alison Balsom, Female Artist of the Year, Antonio Pappano, Male Artist of the Year and Vilde Frang, Newcomer Award winner for their achievements this past year and look forward with equal excitement to future projects."

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Euridice, Orfeo ed Euridice
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The English lyric soprano Kate Royal has had her Beatles moment: She sang for Paul McCartney (on the recording of his "Ecce Cor Meum"). But now she's getting her New York moment with her Metropolitan Opera debut as Euridice in the beautiful Gluck opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Although the opera stage—in particular, the Met—marks the big leagues for rising singers, Royal is also keeping her schedule busy with recitals. She dedicates about five months a year to the more intimate performance form, and is singing at Carnegie Hall in May, in a wide-ranging recital of songs by Schumann, Ravel and many others. It's drawn from her new recording, A Lesson in Love, out March 8.

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