Fantaisies baroques

Maurice Steger is dubbed the "Paganini" and "magician of the recorder" or "the world’s leading recorder player". In order to live up to such high expectations, one requires not only astonishing technique, but also charisma, intellect and a special sensitivity for music. Maurice Steger has been proving all of this to his audiences, inspiring with his intense tone and unstoppable energy in various concert formats all over the world.

As a soloist, conductor or both at once, he regularly performs with the top period instrument ensembles, such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, Venice Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, Il Pomo D’oro, and I Barocchisti. He also performs with leading modern orchestras such as the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Spanish Radio Symphony Orchestra, or the NDR Radiophilharmonie.

Chamber music plays a notable role in the richly varied spectrum of Maurice Steger's artistic endeavors. With fellow musicians and friends such as Hille Perl, Avi Avital, Nuria Rial, Mauro Valli, Sebastian Wienand, Sol Gabetta or the French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, he dedicates himself to a continuously updated repertoire of Early Music in music centers such as London, Vienna, Zurich, Dresden, Basel, Shanghai, Sevilla, Madrid, Hamburg and at festivals like Gstaad, Klosters, Rheingau, Schleswig-Holstein, Úbeda and Verbier. In the last years Maurice Steger played several premieres of new works such as Sei gutes Muts by Iris ter Schiphorst with the Kuss Quartet.

Maurice Steger loves the interaction between different cultures and getting to know other ways of working and interpretive approaches, acting as a concert artist, teacher and juror, not only in Europe but throughout the world. He has toured Asia as well as Australia with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Violons du Roy from Canada and the Malaysia Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He was also the first recorder player from the West to perform with the Traditional Taipei Chinese Orchestra.

His commitment to musical education is also highly important to him: besides the directorship of the Gstaad Baroque Academy at the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, which he took over from 2013-2025 in addition to various master classes, he invented the character of Tino Flautino in order to encourage young children to playfully engage with classical music.

Through his own infinite thirst for knowledge, he succeeds time and again to show how much there is still to be discovered about Baroque music. For example, on his recording Souvenirs, he presented works that he discovered in the private library of Count Harrach in Naples. His album Baroque Twitter with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and the singer Nuria Rial was inspired by birdsong. Mr. Handel's Dinner with La Cetra reflects on Handel's opera performances in London and especially their intermissions. In autumn 2023, Maurice Steger's very personal Tribute to Bach, also recorded with La Cetra, was released with Berlin Classics.

One wonders sometimes where Maurice Steger gets all this energy that helped him support the comeback of the recorder, as Arte presented in a documentary The Recorder: A Comeback. But when you see how much love for the music, the instrument and the audience he puts into each of his many projects, it becomes clear: Maurice Steger is also carved out of very special wood.

Pascale Giguère has been a member of Les Violons du Roy since 1995. She was co-concertmaster from 2000 to 2013, and has been concertmaster since 2014. She has performed with the ensemble in some of the world’s leading venues, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Carnegie Hall in New York, and at leading festivals in Canada, the United States and Europe. Pascale Giguère has also taken part in recordings with Les Violons for the labels Dorian, Atma and Virgin Classics.

In recent years, Pascale Giguère has appeared as a soloist with Les Violons du Roy, in particular in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons; the latter work was recorded by Atma and received a Juno award. She has also performed with the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, Orchestre symphonique de Laval and Orchestre des Grands Ballets Canadiens, with which she played Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, an experience she repeated in December 2006 with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec conducted by Yoav Talmi. In recent seasons she has appeared as a guest soloist at the Domaine Forget international festival and the Parry Sound Festival.  

Pascale Giguère studied at the Montréal Conservatory with Raymond Dessaints, obtaining Premier Prix diplomas in violin and chamber music. She has also won several important prizes, including Grand Prize at the CIBC National Music Festival, First Prize at the Orchestre symphonique de Québec competition, and the prestigious Prix d’Europe award in 1993, which allowed her to continue her studies at Boston University with Roman Totenberg, Peter Zazovski and the Muir Quartet.

Pascale was awarded the Canada Council Instrument Bank’s 1700 Bell Giovanni Tononi violin to play from 2006 to 2008.

Pascale Giguère plays a Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi violin (Milan, 1745), purchased and generously loaned by Marthe Bourgeois. She also plays a Stradivari Antonio, “Di Barbaro” 1727 violin, generously provided by CANIMEX INC. of Drummondville (Quebec) Canada.

Born in Montreal, Suren Barry is a versatile musician, equally at home on the piano, fortepiano, and harpsichord. Having performed with some of the world's most renowned early music ensembles, he has established himself as a sought-after specialist, winning second prize at the Jurow Competition in 2024 and a scholarship from the English Concert of America.

Suren Barry teaches continuo at the University of Montreal and regularly collaborates with ensembles in Canada and the United States, such as Les Violons du Roy, the Twelfth Night ensemble, Ensemble Caprice, and I Musici de Montréal. He also pursues a career as a pianist, performing regularly alongside Carson Becke of the Octavian Duo, an ensemble dedicated to commissioning contemporary music and arranging orchestral works.