Symphonie à la française

Nicolas Ellis is Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne, Principal Guest Conductor of Les Violons du Roy and Artistic Director of Orchestre de l’Agora, which he founded in Montreal in 2013.

The 25/26 season sees Nicolas Ellis debut with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Hamburger Symphoniker, the Orchestra of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Baltimore and Seattle Symphony Orchestras; he returns for subscription concerts with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. 

Highlights of the previous season include performances with the Tampere and Luxembourg Philharmonics, San Diego Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and with the Orchestre Métropolitain, with whom he is a regular favourite.  

Now in his second season as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne, he directs Mozart, Brahms, Schumann, Stravinsky, Bartok and Shostakovich, a programme centered around Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, collaborating with a local Youth Theatre, and an evening of folk music, featuring traditional folk musicians from Québec.

Acclaimed for his approach to the baroque and classical repertoire, his recent performance of Mozart Symphony No. 25 with Les Violons du Roy was described by Le Devoir as “one of the most beautiful Mozart symphonies heard in Montreal in the last 20 years”.

At the Opéra de Montréal, Nicolas has led productions of Le nozze di Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, L'incoronazione di Poppea and L’enfant et les sortilèges. Elsewhere, he conducted Die Fledermaus at Opéra de Québec, Britten’s War Requiem at Graz Opera, and a new production of Die Zauberföte at Opéra de Rennes.

Raphaël Pidoux began his musical studies with the piano. He learned the cello with his father and entered Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at age 17. He obtained a First Prize in 1987 and enrolled in Philippe Muller’s class for graduate studies. He then joined Jean-Claude Pennetier’s class on chamber music advanced skills, and Christophe Coin’s class on Baroque cello. He studied under the direction of Janos Starker in Bloomington (USA) in 1989. He is prize-winner of the Bach cello competition in Leipzig.

As the same time as his career with the Trio Wanderer, Raphaël Pidoux frequently plays with Christophe Coin, the Ensemble baroque de Limoges and the Mosaïques Quartet as well as with orchestras as Les Siècles and Rouen Orchestra. He gives concerts of Piazzolla repertoire with the accordionist Richard Galliano and in 2009, he plays in the Noureev choregraphy Bach Suite with Kader Blarbi at the Opéra de Paris.

Raphaël Pidoux is professor of cello at the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique. He has found with his Trio Wanderer’s colleagues, a piano trio class at the Paris’ CRR which prepares ensembles for concerts and international competition.

Raphaël Pidoux plays on a violoncello by Goffredo CAPPA (Saluzzo 1680).