Les violoncelles Français
Chamber music
It was the desire to make music together, stimulated by perfect mutual understanding and a sense of sharing, that prompted eight leading figures of the French school of cello-playing (Emmanuelle Bertrand, Éric-Maria Couturier, Emmanuel Gaugué, Xavier Phillips, Raphaël Pidoux, Roland Pidoux, Nadine Pierre, and François Salque) to launch this project. Performing as a ‘consort’ in homage to the polyphonic music of the viols of an earlier period, they play a selection of entirely new transcriptions of pieces taken from the mainstream repertoire, from Monteverdi to Wagner, and magnified by the transcriber Roland Pidoux. The exploitation of the full four-octave range makes it possible to take emotional and technical risks. With their supreme richness of timbres and the power and nobility of their sound, they prove without fear of contradiction that the potential of the cello is quite incredible. Right from their first concerts at Les Folles Journées in 2006, they were acclaimed by public and critics alike. Since then they have appeared at numerous festivals, including Fontevraud, Beauvais, Auvers- sur-Oise, Reims, Bourg-Madame, Castres, La Vézère, and the Amsterdam Biennale. This is their first recording.
