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PARIS: Renowned violinist, director of a music festival and an orchestra, the Frenchman Renaud Capuçon adds a new string to his bow: a label that will do “the short scale” for young musicians in search of visibility.

The artist, who has just left Warner Classics and the Erato label to join Deutsche Grammophon (subsidiary of Universal Music Group), thus becomes a producer, developing in collaboration with this prestigious record company a label called “Beau Soir Productions”, which will help young talents to perform more widely.

“It’s always been in my head but I hadn’t found the key to how to do it,” said the violinist, who already often put forward young musicians, especially at the Easter Festival that he founded in Aix-en-Provence, in the south-east of France, and which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2023.

“Bring music everywhere»

“It crystallized during the pandemic. There were a lot of young people affected and, as I was already helping and advising emerging talents, I said to myself: + Might as well do it in an entity +”, adds the violinist who, during confinement, had broadcast videos of him playing at home every day on social networks.

The idea of ​​”Beau Soir Productions”, presented by the artist and Deutsche Grammophon as an innovative project in the world of classical music, is to offer a kind of “short scale to make them move faster”.

The label produces the concerts of these young people with Renaud Capuçon across France and recordings of them will be broadcast by Deutsche Grammophon.

“These are not young people coming out of the Conservatory, they are already professionals”, he explains. For the moment, the project involves six talents, including the violinist Manon Galy (revelation at the Victoires de la Musique Classique this year) and the young violist Paul Zientara.

“As long as you’re at the Conservatoire, you’re protected, but when you’re in between and you don’t yet have an agent, you have to make the most important decisions of your career as a young musician. life”, adds Mr. Capuçon.

“I’m either second violin or conducting the orchestra, so there’s no risk of overshadowing them,” says the man who made his debut as a maestro a year ago with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, of which he is the artistic director.

“It’s not me who makes them progress but, by taking them to full halls, they gain confidence,” he says.

“There is also a social side: we are going to perform in regional halls that are struggling to fill, in prisons, in hospitals. It seems essential to me to bring music everywhere”, affirms the musician from 46 years, who will continue to perform solo and release albums.

“I feel like I’m in another part of my life,” says the artist, who is also the husband of French journalist Laurence Ferrari.

He has just released an album (under the Erato label), in which he tackles Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, as well as concertos by the unknown Guadeloupean composer Le Chevalier de Saint-George (1745-1799), who will be the subject of a Disney biopic.

Having founded an endowment fund two years ago which is used to lend instruments, often expensive, to young musicians, he enjoys this role of “father of the family”, providing them with advice in terms of repertoire but also concerning their image on social media.

“Young people can be swept up in a kind of wave when they are told: + You are great + and they forget that they are there to play Brahms or Beethoven… But you have to keep your feet on the ground to hold on to the long term,” he insists.