René Jacobs is a Belgian musician. He came to fame as a countertenor, but later in his career he became known as a conductor of baroque and classical opera.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns was composed in 1868 and is probably Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concerto. It was dedicated to Madame A. de Villers. At the première on 13 May the composer was the soloist and Anton Rubinstein conducted the orchestra. Saint-Saëns wrote the concerto in three weeks and had very little time to prepare for the première; consequently, the piece was not initially successful. The capricious changes in style provoked Zygmunt Stojowski to quip that it "begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach."
Anne Azéma is a French-born soprano, scholar, and stage director. She is currently artistic director of the Boston Camerata. She has been an important or leading singer of early music since 1993. She has created and directed programs for the Boston Camerata and is also noted as a music scholar. She is perhaps best known for performing music from the Middle Ages, lute songs from the Renaissance period, Baroque sacred music, Shaker song, and contemporary music theater. She is also a music educator and a researcher. She has performed in Japan, Germany, the US, Australia and elsewhere.
Jean-Guihen Queyras is a French cellist. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 11 March 1967, and moved with his parents to Algeria when he was 5 years old; the family moved to France 3 years later. He is a professor at the Musikhochschule Freiburg and artistic co-director of the Rencontres Musicales de Haute-Provence. He won the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in Toronto in 2002.
Raphaël Sévère born 15 September 1994 in Rennes, is a French clarinettist.
The Diapason d'Or is a recommendation of outstanding (mostly) classical music recordings given by reviewers of Diapason magazine in France, broadly equivalent to "Editor's Choice", "Disc of the Month" in the British Gramophone magazine.
The Trio Wanderer is a French piano trio made up of Vincent Coq, piano, Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin, and Raphaël Pidoux, cello, who graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1988 they won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, and in 1990 the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in the US.
François-Xavier Paul Roth is a French conductor, who founded Les Siècles, an orchestra which performs on instruments appropriate to the period of composition of each piece, from the late Baroque and Classical eras to 20th century music.
Alexandre Tharaud is a French pianist. He is active on the concert stage and has released a large and diverse discography.
Brigitte Engerer was a French pianist.
Sébastien Daucé is a French conductor, born in Rennes (France) on 4 June 1980. He is artistic director and founder of Ensemble Correspondances, formed from alumni of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon.
L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant, FP 129, is a composition for narrator and piano by Francis Poulenc, based on Histoire de Babar and written from 1940. Orchestral versions were later written by Jean Françaix and David Matthews.
Henri Demarquette is a French contemporary classical cellist.
Sabine Devieilhe is a French operatic coloratura soprano. She is known for her interpretation of works by Mozart, Baroque music, and 19th-century opera. She is often regarded as a successor to Natalie Dessay.
Claire Désert is a French classical pianist.
François-Frédéric Guy is a French classical pianist.
Les Siècles is a French symphony orchestra founded in 2003 by François-Xavier Roth, with ambition to put works from the 17th to 21st centuries into today's perspective. The musicians of the orchestra play each repertoire on the historical instruments appropriate to the time of its creation.
Geneviève Laurenceau is a French classical violinist. She was a supersoloist with the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse from 2007 to 2017.
Jérôme Hantaï is a viola da gamba player and fortepianist.
Rémi Geniet is a French pianist.
