Mozart : Beauté sublime ! Charles Richard-Hamelin et Jonathan Cohen

Cellist and harpsichordist Jonathan Cohen is one of the most accomplished and sought-after British musicians of his generation. A fervent promoter of chamber music, he has mastered and explored repertoires ranging from baroque opera to the classical symphony. Cohen gained widespread recognition as associate conductor of Les Arts Florissants and, from 2010, as founder and artistic director of the Arcangelo ensemble. He has worked with Les Violons du Roy since 2014 and became their musical director in 2018. He also serves as artistic director of the Tetbury Music Festival and Boston’s prestigious Handel and Haydn Society.

A much-in-demand guest conductor, Cohen has appeared on both sides of the Atlantic with numerous ensembles, including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Liège Royal Philharmonic, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, the New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Throughout the 24-25 season, he returns to Kammerorchester Basel and directs performances of St Matthew Passion with both Rotterdam Philharmonic and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He returns to Glyndebourne Festival for a revival of Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel Saul. He leads both Handel and Haydn Society and Houston Symphony Orchestra in Messiah, and with Handel and Haydn he also conducts Haydn The Seasons, Mozart Requiem and Beethoven Mass in C.

In addition to his impressive discography of almost 30 works as director of Arcangelo, he has recorded three albums with Les Violons du Roy, all of which have garnered national and international acclaim. His album devoted to Handel and Glass with American countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo earned Les Violons du Roy their first-ever Grammy nomination in 2019. Cohen has introduced several prestigious guest artists to audiences of Les Violons du Roy and has toured three times in Europe and North America with them.

Silver medalist and laureate of the Krystian Zimerman Prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin is standing out today as one of the most important musicians of his generation. In 2014, he also won the second prize at the Montreal International Musical Competition and the third prize at the Seoul International Music Competition in South Korea. Charles is the recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec and the prestigious Career Development Award offered by the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto.

He has appeared in various prestigious festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron in France, the Prague Spring Festival, the “Chopin and his Europe” Festival in Warsaw and the Lanaudière Festival in Canada. As a soloist, he has performed with more than fifty ensembles including the main symphony orchestras of Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Métropolitain, Québec, Edmonton, Calgary…) as well as with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, OFUNAM (Mexico), les Violons du Roy and I Musici de Montréal. He has played under the baton of renowned conductors such as Kent Nagano, Antoni Wit, Vasily Petrenko, Jacek Kaspszyk, Aziz Shokhakimov, Peter Oundjian, Jacques Lacombe, Fabien Gabel, Carlo Rizzi, Alexander Prior, Giancarlo Guerrero, Christoph Campestrini, Lan Shui and Jean-Marie Zeitouni. Charles Richard-Hamelin is a graduate from McGill University, the Yale School of Music, the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal and has studied with Paul Surdulescu, Sara Laimon, Boris Berman, André Laplante et Jean Saulnier.

His first solo recording, which features late works by Chopin, was released in September 2015 on the Analekta label and received widespread acclaim from critics throughout the world (Diapason, BBC Music Magazine, Le Devoir) as well as a Felix Award (ADISQ). A second album, recorded live at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City with music by Beethoven, Enescu and Chopin, was released in the fall of 2016 and also had a very positive welcome (Gramophone, La Presse, The WholeNote). The first volume of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas with Andrew Wan was released in the fall of 2018 and his next projects include both Chopin Concertos with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Kent Nagano.