At only 25 years of age, French cellist Aurélien Pascal is attracting international attention for his “unparalleled virtuosity and intuitive musicality” (The Strad). He has won several prestigious international competitions, including Second Prize at the 2013 International Paulo Competition, as well as the Grand Prix, Prix du Public, and Best Performance of a Toch Concerto at the 2014 Emanuel Feuermann Competition. His recent successes, including placing fourth at the 2017 Queen Elisabeth Competition where he was the youngest finalist, confirm that he is one of the most brilliant representatives of his generation. Prior to this, he was the Adami Révélation Classique in 2013.
Pascal regularly performs as a soloist with major orchestras throughout Europe, notably with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra in Moscow, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, alongside conductors such as Augustin Dumay, Vladimir Fedoseyev, John Storgårds, Pascal Rophé, Christoph Poppen, Clemens Schuldt and Okko Kamu.
Frequently invited to Asia, he has played with the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Kansai and Sendai Philharmonic Orchestras, and Hong Kong Sinfonietta, with which he has performed several times both in Hong Kong and on their European tour in 2017. He recently made his débuts with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and Gilbert Varga, the Filarmonica de Stat Transilvania alongside Andrei Feher, as well as the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Okko Kamu.
The 2018/2019 season brought Pascal to the Konzerthaus Berlin alongside András Schiff, BOZAR in Brussels, Beethovenhaus Bonn and CelloFest in Finland. He returned to the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival to give several concerts, and gave his first solo recital at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. He has performed in concerto with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National de Metz, Orchestre de Bretagne and Orchestre de Douai Région Hauts-de-France.
As a recitalist, Pascal has performed at prestigious festivals such as Verbier, Colmar, Prades, Schloss Elmau, Beethovenfest in Bonn, Flâneries de Reims, La Folle Journée de Nantes and Japan, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier and Rencontres Musicales d’Évian, with partners such as Emmanuel Pahud, András Schiff, Pavel Kolesnikov, Rémi Geniet, Ben Kim, Augustin Dumay, Christian Tetzlaff and the Modigliani Quartet. He also forms a string trio with Adrien La Marca and Liya Petrova. Since being awarded the Audience Prize at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in 2015, he has been a regular invitee to the festival, and has performed on stages including the Berlin Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Muziekgebouw, the Auditoriums of the Musée du Louvre and Musée d’Orsay, Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and the ARK NOVA/Lucerne Festival mobile concert hall in Japan.
A laureate of the Banque Populaire and Colas foundations, Pascal joined the Orpheum Foundation’s support program for young soloists in 2015, which invited him – following his début with Vladimir Fedoseyev at the Tonhalle in Zurich – to record Franz Danzi’s concerto with the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Howard Griffiths for Sony Classical. This disc, released in 2018, added to a discography that includes the Ravel Trio with Denis Pascal and Svetlin Roussev, as well as the Brahms Sextet with Augustin Dumay, Henri Demarquette and Miguel da Silva. His latest CD, released in spring 2019, includes Dohnányi’s Ruralia Hungarica and Kodály’s Cello Sonata Op 8.
Born in 1994 into a family of musicians, Pascal studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris with Philippe Müller and benefited from masterclasses with the legendary János Starker in Paris, Basel and Bloomington. He currently studies with Frans Helmerson and Gary Hoffman at the Kronberg Academy in Germany, and plays a French cello by Charles-Adolphe Gand from 1850.
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