Bibliothèque nationale de France - Site Richelieu
concert-portrait ELSA BARRAINEmonday, february 24th 2025 - 6:30pm
Marine Chagnon, soprano
Raphaëlle Moreau, violin
Camille Fonteneau, violin
Léa Hennino, viola
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
Célia Oneto Bensaid, piano
Born in Paris in 1910, Elsa Barraine studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire with Paul Dukas. A brilliant student, she won the Prix de Rome aged just 19 and immediately left for the Villa Médicis, where she composed her opera Le Roi bossu, performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1932. On her return to France, she became head of singing for Radiodiffusion Française. It was during this period that she wrote, among other works, her second symphony ‘Voïna’ (‘war’ in Russian) before joining the Communist Party in 1938. Dismissed from radio during the war, she founded the Front National des Musiciens (National Musicians’ Front) with Roger Désormière and Louis Durey, with the aim of fighting Nazi propaganda in the music world. In 1943, she was arrested and interrogated by the police, before going into hiding. After the war, she resumed her career as a composer and her works met with increasing success, until she left the Communist Party in 1949. She then became a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, taking over Jeanne Leleu’s piano deciphering class in 1952, then Olivier Messiaen’s analysis class in 1969, abandoning composition to devote herself entirely to her students until she left in 1974.
PROGRAM
ELSA BARRAINE
ELSA BARRAINE (1910-1974)
Melodies
Piano Quintet
Marche du printemps sans amours
for piano
Suite juive
for violin and piano
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Piece for piano and strings quartet
ELSA BARRAINE
LOUIS DUREY (1878-1979)
Bestiaire (extracts)
for voice, strings and piano
PAUL DUKAS (1865-1935)
L’Apprenti sorcier
for violin, cello and piano
DISTRIBUTION
Marine Chagnon, soprano
Raphaëlle Moreau, violin
Camille Fonteneau, violin
Léa Hennino, viola
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
Célia Oneto Bensaid, piano
MARINE CHAGNON
She released her first CD on the MIRARE label, entitled -Ljus- with pianist Joséphine Ambroselli, which highlights Swedish melodies from the first half of the 20th century. Marine Chagnon will be a member of the Troupe de l’Opéra National de Paris for the 2023/2024 season, taking on a number of roles including Zerlina, Don Giovanni at the Opéra Bastille and the title role in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges at the Palais Garnier.
RAPHAËLLE MOREAU
Nominated in the Revelations category at the Victoires de la Musique Classique awards in 2020, Raphaëlle Moreau won the First Grand Prize at the XVIth Postacchini Competition and is a laureate of the Nicati-de-Luze, Or du Rhin and Banque Populaire foundations, as well as the Marcel Bleuestein-Blanchet Foundation for Vocation. After studying with Rodica Bogdanas and Suzanne Gessner, she was unanimously admitted to the Paris Conservatoire. In 2018, she obtained a Master’s degree as a soloist in Renaud Capuçon’s class in Switzerland. Appointed concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester at the age of twenty-one, she has worked with Herbert Blomstedt, Jonathan Nott, Vladimir Jurowski and Lorenzo Viotti, and has performed at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg. As a soloist, she has appeared with many orchestras, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Orchestre National de France, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Myung-Whun Chung and Simone Young, among others.
Raphaëlle performs a wide repertoire, from the great classics to forgotten women composers and contemporary works. She has premiered works by Camille Pépin, Clara Olivares, Thierry Hersant and Grégoire Rolland. She plays a Carlo Tononi violin from Bologna, generously loaned by Michael Guttman.
CAMILLE FONTENEAU
Camille Fonteneau is a Franco-American violinist with an insatiable curiosity, always happy to discover new ways of seeing Music, Art and Life in general. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire in the class of Alexis Galpérine and François Salque, Camille is a member of several chamber music ensembles and plays regularly with Le Balcon, Ensemble Calliopée, Les Dissonnances, the Rotterdam Chamber Music Society and others. She has performed at a number of festivals, including Les Folles Journées de Nantes, La Grange de Meslay, La Roque d’Anthéron, the Festival des Arcs and the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise. A former founding member of the Trio Hélios, she recorded two discs for the Mirare label, D’un matin de printemps and Bohemia, both of which won awards from the press (Choc Classica). She also won numerous prizes, notably at the Lyon, Trondheim and Joseph Joachim competitions in Weimar…
Driven by the desire to unite a group, Camille performs as concertmaster with the Orchestre de Metz, Ostinato, Appassionato, the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, and as co-solo with the Orchestre de La Monnaie. In 2023, she founded the Fidelio Quartet alongside Marie-Astrid Hulot, Léa Hennino and Maria Andrea Mendoza.
LÉA HENNINO
Born in 1991, Léa Hennino obtained her DEM with honours in Carole Dauphin’s class in 2008. A prizewinner in 2013 at the CNSMD in Paris, where she studied with Sabine Toutain and Christophe Gaugué, Léa also spent a year working with Japanese violist Nobuko Imai in Geneva. She spent two years perfecting her skills with the English violist Lawrence Power in Zurich. Recognised as one of the most promising violists of her generation, Léa Hennino has performed on major international stages alongside such renowned artists as Renaud Capucon, Alina Ibragimova, Hanna Weinmeister, Gérard Caussé and Clemens Hagen.
Léa is a regular guest with ensembles such as Les Dissonnances, I Giardini and the Aurora Orchestra in England. As a soloist, she has performed Martinü’s Concerto with the Hradec Kralové Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic and Mozart’s Symphonie concertante with the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. Selected to take part in international academies in Poland, Germany, the USA, Switzerland, England, Sweden and Spain, she performs in various ensembles in concerts and master classes with great masters. Léa has won numerous prizes in national and international competitions and is a laureate of several foundations.
HÉLOÏSE LUZZATI
CÉLIA ONETO BENSAID
A singular and committed personality, Célia chooses the repertoire she performs with care: American music (including her own transcriptions), French music, contemporary music and works by female composers all feature prominently in her programmes. A YAMAHA artist, she is the winner of numerous international competitions: Piano Campus, Fondation Banque Populaire, Cziffra, etc. She has been a guest at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Piano aux Jacobins, La Roque d’Anthéron, La Folle Journée de Nantes, the Grand Théâtre de Harbin (China), Salamanca Hall (Japan), Wigmore Hall (London)… A much sought-after chamber musician, she has performed with Renaud Capuçon, Violaine Despeyroux, Elsa Dreisig, Marie-Laure Garnier, Olivia Gay, the Hanson Quartet, Léa Hennino, Héloïse Luzzati, Fiona McGown, Alexandre Pascal and others: His first solo disc, American Touches (2018), is devoted to Gershwin and Bernstein, and Métamorphosis (2021) to Glass, Pépin and Ravel (5 Classica stars, contemporary disc of the week on France Musique, etc.). She also took part in a monograph on the unpublished works of Charlotte Sohy from La Boîte à Pépites, widely acclaimed by the international press. In January 2023, she released the CD ‘Chants Nostalgiques’ with Marie-Laure Garnier and the Quatuor Hanson, featuring French mélodie, which won TTTT from Télérama.
do you know
ElSA BARRAINE?
Elsa Barraine (1910 – 1999)
Marche du printemps sans amours
Théo Fouchenneret, piano