Emmanuelle Bertrand

Here are two masterpieces for cello by Shostakovich, written 25 years apart. The insolent Sonata Op.40 of 1934, contemporary with 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District': the opera soon to plunge its composer into disgrace with Stalin, was answered in 1959 by the bitter self-questioning of an artist who seemed to have sunk into depression. This Cello Concerto ends with a wicked caricature of true joy, adding the final touch to the extreme polymorphism of a traumatised humourist who had long since learned not to laugh . . .

A passionate devotee of chamber music and member of the ensemble Les Violoncelles Français, Emmanuelle Bertrand has appeared in duo repertoire with the pianist Pascal Amoyel since 1999. Her harmonia mundi recordings as a soloist or in tandem with Amoyel have all received the most prestigious critical accolades in France and abroad, including the Cannes Classical Award, Diapason d’Or of the Year, 10 de Répertoire-Classica, Choc de Classica, and ffff de Télérama.

In 2014 she will give the first performance of Thierry Escaïch’s Cello Concerto.

“Underrated, like most of Bloch's music, they are played here with aristocratic dignity by Emmanuelle Bertrand.” The Guardian

“The enthusiastic playing of Bertrand and Amoyel captures Saint-Saëns’ characteristic youthful vigour and gleeful virtuosity.” Classic FM Magazine

Through these selected masterpieces of the repertoire for solo cello, Emmanuelle Bertrand invites us on a journey to the heart of language of popular inspiration.

Composed in 1971 by Benjamin Britten for Mstislav Rostropovich, the Suite for unaccompanied cello No.3 has often been regarded as a sort of private journal of the composer’s, so emotionally charged does it seem. We do not know its exact programme, but the importance of the work’s dedicatee cannot be underestimated in view of the references it contains. It comprises nine movements, the principal elements of which come from three Russian folk themes arranged by Tchaikovsky in his volumes of folksongs for piano and a funeral hymn from the Orthodox liturgy, the Kontakion.

The masterpiece of the Catalan composer Gaspar Cassadó, the Suite for cello composed in 1925 is well known to exponents of the instrument for its virtuoso demands. Its three movements are based on three Spanish folk dances.

Pascal Amoyel’s Itinérance (2003) derives its context above all from a joint project of the composer-pianist and Emmanuelle Bertrand entitled ‘Block 15’, which generated a series of staged concerts based on the testimony of two survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Simon Laks; both musicians, they explain in their writings how music and its special status in the camps saved their lives.

The programme ends with Kodály’s Sonata Op.8, probably the most remarkable and most frequently played chamber work of the Hungarian composer. The formal simplicity of its three movements contrasts with the extraordinary technical challenges their inventiveness poses for the interpreter.

Discovered when she won the young soloist category at the Victoires de la Musique Classique in 2001, Emmanuelle Bertrand is one of today’s leading cellists. Her penchant for contemporary music has led her to give the first performances of numerous works dedicated to her, among them pieces by Édith Canat de Chizy, Pascal Amoyel, and Bernard Cavanna (Shanghai Concerto).

A passionate devotee of chamber music and member of the ensemble Les Violoncelles Français, she has appeared in duo repertoire with the pianist Pascal Amoyel since 1999. Her harmonia mundi recordings as a soloist or in tandem with Amoyel have all received prestigious critical accolades in France and abroad.

Alongside the Sonata Op.36 Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel have transcribed some of the delightful Lyric Pieces as a sort of personal diary.They retrace the life of Grieg, from the little Arietta of 1867 to the final backward glance of Remembrances (1901). The programme also includes two original pieces for this formation, the Intermezzo and Grieg's own transcription of the Scherzo from his Third Violin Sonata. Discovered by the wider public when she won the young soloist category at the Victoires de la Musique Classique in 2001, Emmanuelle Bertrand is today among the foremost representatives of the French school of cellists. Her harmonia mundi recordings as a soloist or in tandem with the pianist Pascal Amoyel have received many prestigious critical accolades.

"Composer and teacher, Bernard Cavanna is a multi-faceted figure: self-taught, provocative, intuitive and original. Whether ironically auctioning off his own music at cut-rate prices in a market or displaying a pallid face at the rehearsal of one of his concertos, the artist always exposes himself to the camera with delicacy and a graceful sense of propriety."

Delphine de Blic

Les Violoncelles Français first appeared in concert together in 2006: eight leading figures of the French school of cellists, they perform here as a consort in homage to violists of an earlier period. They play an entirely new set of transcriptions taken from mainstream repertoire in this, their first recording, arranged by Roland Pidoux.