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Victor Julien-Laferrière & Guillaume Bellom

Cello and Piano

SUNDAY CONCERTS

The Warne Ballroom at the Cosmos Club

Tickets are $40, $20 for members and students with ID, and free for youth (ages 8-18) with reservation; museum admission for that day is included. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.

Members: please sign in to receive member discount, which will be applied at checkout.

On Fridays at 5 pm preceding Sunday concerts, any additional Rush Tickets will be made available via the “Buy Ticket” link. Miss your chance for Rush Tickets? Standby Tickets may become available (credit card only) at the entrance to the Warne Ballroom.

image for 2017-11-05-sunday-concerts-julien-laferriere

Program

French cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière won the Grand Prize in the renowned Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2017, the first time this prestigious competition has been dedicated to the cello. For his prize-winning performance, Julien-Laferrière played the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich, and he ends his Phillips concert with the powerful Cello Sonata by the same composer. Alongside this he will play Brahms’s passionate and brooding E minor Cello Sonata, sets of virtuoso variations by Beethoven and Martinů on themes by Mozart and Rossini, and the expansive Nocturne by the living French composer Thierry Escaich.

PROGRAM:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
7 Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,” WoO 46

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38
     Allegro non troppo
     Allegretto quasi Menuetto
     Allegro 

INTERMISSION

BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ (1890-1959)
Variations on a Theme of Rossini, H.290

THIERRY ESCAICH (b. 1965)
Nocturne

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40
     Allegro non troppo
     Allegro
     Largo
     Allegro


Please note that this concert takes place at the Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Ave., NW.

Dress Code at the Cosmos Club:

Gentlemen are expected to wear jackets, dress slacks, a collared long-sleeved shirt (tucked-in) or turtleneck at all times.

Ladies are expected to dress in an equivalent fashion, which means dresses, suits, skirts or dress slacks with jackets or tops of equivalent formality. Leggings or tights, unless worn with skirts, dresses, or long jackets, are not considered to be of equivalent formality.

Military uniforms and national dress of equivalent formality are also acceptable.

Sweat suits or other athletic or sports attire, jeans or other denim garments, sneakers, flip-flops, athletic footwear and shorts are never acceptable in the public rooms.

About the Artists

First Prize Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2017, Victor Julien-Laferrière is also first Prize Winner of the 2012 Spring Prague International Competition.

Born in 1990, Julien-Laferrière completed his studies at the Paris Conservatory in 2008 with Rolland Pidoux. Since 2009 he has studied at the Vienna University with Heinrich Schiff and from 2005-2011 at the Seiji Ozawa International Music Academy in Switzerland.

Julien-Laferrière has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as Orchestre National de Belgique under Andrey Boreyko, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Peter Oundjian, Brussels Philharmonic under Stéphane Denève, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie under Frank Braley, Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, State Hermitage Orchestra, Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra, South Czech Philharmonic, Czech Chamber Philharmonic Pardubice, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

As a chamber musician he has been invited to perform at the KKL Luzern, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Auditorium du Louvre, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Festival de Pâques d’Aix-en-Provence, Tonhalle Zürich, Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Al Bustan Festival, Ticino Musica Festival, Prague EuroArt Festival, Kuhmo Festival (Finland), Berne, Autunno Musicale Caserta (Italy), Besançon, Deauville festivals, Nantes Folle Journée, in the Cité de la Musique and the Salle Gaveau in Paris, and the Auditorium in Dijon.

His first recording was released in 2016 on the Mirare label with pianist Adam Laloum, and featured sonatas by Debussy, Franck, and Brahms. The recording has received a number of awards including the Diapason d’or, CHOC by Classica, ffff by Télérama, and Editors’ Choice by France Musique.

Julien-Laferrière is a co-founder of the Trio les Esprits, founded in 2009 with pianist Adam Laloum and violinist Mi-Sa Yang. Their recording of works by Beethoven and Schumann have been released to great acclaim. He has collaborated with musicians such as Augustin Dumay, Renaud Capuçon, Christian Ivaldi, Alain Planès, Vladimir Mendelssohn.

Born in 1992, Guillaume Bellom studied piano and violin from the age of six at the Besançon Conservatoire (CRR), where in 2008 he was awarded prizes for piano, violin, and chamber music.

In 2009, he was unanimously admitted to the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), where he joined the piano class of Nicholas Angelich and Romano Pallottini. He also studied under Franck Braley, Marie-François Bucquet, Dominique Merlet, Dany Rouet, Denis Pascal, Leon Fleisher, and Jean-Claude Pennetier. He is currently furthering his studies with Hortense Cartier-Bresson.

In 2011 he also joined the violin class of Roland Daugareil, Suzanne Gessner and Christophe Poiget at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM).

Bellom was winner of the piano prize in the Besançon Jeunes Musiciens competition in 2008, following which he performed the Grieg Piano Concerto and the First Piano Concerto of Brahms with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Besançon. He performs regularly at the Fondation Singer-Polignac in Paris, where he has been artist in residence since 2012.

His interest in chamber music has led to appearances at festivals including those of Deauville (Festival de Pâques and Août Musical). He also collaborates with his brother, the cellist Adrien Bellom and more recently with violinist Amaury Coeytaux and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière. He premiered Danse encore, a trio by the composer and pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, at the Chapelle du Méjan in Arles.

In 2014, Bellom performed the Animal Carnival by Saint-Saens at the Champs-Elysées concert hall in Paris, and won a prize at the Rhine Gold Foundation. In 2015, he won the first prize at the international piano competition of Epinal, France. In 2016, he won the first prize of the Thierry Scherz competition in Gstaad, Switzerland.

His first solo album, featuring pieces by Schubert, Haydn and Debussy, was released in early 2017. His great interest in chamber music, shared with his friend Ismaël Margain, lead them into joining various ensembles such as those performing at the Deauville Festival of Music. They play piano four-hands together and have made two recordings dedicated to Mozart and Shubert under the label Aparte/Harmonia Mundi.

Watch & Listen

Watch & Listen