Festival de Saint-Denis
La vie de Fanny M.Wednesday and Thursday, May 21st and 22nd 2025
NN, comedian
Pierre Créac’h, illustrations
Sarah Dayan, violin
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
David Kadouch, piano
Pauline Delabroy-Allard, text
Fanny Mendelssohn has gone down in music history as a self-effacing composer, prevented from writing by a tyrannical father and an intrusive brother. Yet this reductive image does not do justice to this virtuoso pianist, prolific composer and enthusiastic concert organizer, who was a pivotal figure in the German musical world of the 19th century. She wrote over two hundred and fifty Lieder, a hundred pieces for solo piano, several cantatas, an oratorio and chamber music. From her childhood in an erudite Jewish family to her first compositions at the age of fourteen, from her marriage to the painter Wilhelm Hensel, against the advice of her parents, to the difficult publication of her works, against the advice of her brother Felix, this show does justice to the singular trajectory of one of the most famous female composers of the 19th century. Written by author Pauline Delabroy-Allard, the text features Fanny Mendelssohn’s own voice, through extracts from her diaries and correspondence. The composer is brought to life by Pierre Créac’h’s drawings, projected live during the concert. An immersive show to discover a singular artist’s career, open to all ages 8 and up.
PROGRAM
LA VIE DE FANNY M.
FANNY MENDELSSOHN (1805-1847)
Das Jahr
Nocturne in G minor
Nocturne Napolitano in B minor
for piano
Trio in D minor
for violin, cello and piano
Fantaisie
for cello and piano
Adagio
for violin and piano
ELSA BARRAINE
DISTRIBUTION
NN, comedian
Pierre Créac’h, illustrations
Sarah Dayan, violin
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
David Kadouch, piano
Pauline Delabroy-Allard, text
PIERRE CRÉAC’H
Author-illustrator-composer Pierre Créac’h is a versatile artist. He combines his talents to write illustrated musical tales for young and old. He not only writes and draws them, but also composes and produces the soundtracks. Classical music and drawing are his lifelong loves. Passionate about voice and fiction, he uses a variety of means to take his audience into a narrative world filled with poetry, mystery and tenderness. After graduating from the Montpellier Conservatory of Music in piano and composition, he went on to attend the highly reputed Penninghen School of Graphic Art, where he taught academic drawing and illustration for fifteen years. This dual training has steered his career towards an ever-changing plurality between sound and image.
SARAH DAYAN
Sarah Dayan studied music at the CNR de Boulogne-Billancourt, notably with Agnès Reverdy, Jacques Ghestem and Hortense Cartier-Bresson. After obtaining a first prize in violin and a first prize in chamber music, she joined Olivier Charlier’s class at the CNSM de Paris. In 2003, she obtained her Diplôme de Formation Supérieure from the CNSM de Paris in violin and chamber music, with honors. In 2004, she was awarded the Prix de l’Académie Internationale Maurice Ravel de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, as well as the Lion’s Club and Rotary Club chamber music prizes. In 2001 and 2002 she went on an Erasmus exchange with Géza Kápas at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. She has also received guidance from Annick Roussin, Jean Mouillère, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Michaël Hentz, Xavier Gagnepain, Peter Csaba, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Régis Pasquier and Christophe Poiget. In 2004, she founded the Quatuor Voce, with whom she enjoys an international career. Since 2007, she has held the Certificat d’Aptitude à l’enseignement du violon.
Sarah plays a violin by Stefano Scarampella (1888).
HÉLOÏSE LUZZATI
DAVID KADOUCH
Born in 1985, David Kadouch trained with Odile Poisson at the C.N.R. in Nice, with Jacques Rouvier at the CNSM in Paris, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia School in Madrid, and with Murray Perahia, Maurizio Pollini, Maria-Joao Pires, Daniel Barenboim, Vitaly Margulis, Itzhak Perlman, Elisso Virsaladze and Emanuel Krasovsly. At 13, he played at New York’s Metropolitan Hall, and at 14 at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory. In 2005, he was a guest at the Salzburg and Verbier Academies (Prix d’Honneur in 2009), then a finalist in the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2009. Since 2007, he has been a prizewinner at the ADAMI and Natixis Banques Populaires Foundations, as well as “Révélation Jeune Talent” at the 2010 Victoires de la Musique awards and “Young Artist of the Year” at the 2011 Classical Music Awards. David Kadouch is invited to numerous festivals and regularly performs chamber music with his partners Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Edgar Moreau, Nikolaj Znaider, Antoine Tamestit, Frans Helmerson, Victor Julien-Laferrière, Yuri Revich, Sol Gabetta, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Michel Dalberto, as well as the Ebène, Modigliani, Quiroga and Ardeo Quartets. He is also a guest soloist with the most prestigious international orchestras. David gives numerous solo and duo recitals with Edgar Moreau in Europe and elsewhere. Among his outstanding recordings, his disc “Révolution” (Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Janacek, Dussek, Rzewski), was awarded the Choc Classica of the year 2019 and widely acclaimed by the critics. In 2022, he will record a disc devoted to female composers from the period of Flaubert’s novel “Mme Bovary” for the Mirare label.
PAULINE DELABROY-ALLARD
Pauline Delabroy-Allard was born in 1988. She is a librarian at Lycée Michelet in Vanves (Hauts-de-Seine). She is the daughter of writer Jean Delabroy. She has written for “En attendant Nadeau”, an online site dedicated to literature, ideas and the arts.
“Ça raconte Sarah” her first novel published in 2018 won significant critical acclaim. Her first children’s album, “Avec toi”, which she wrote, illustrated by Japanese artist Hifumiyo, is published in 2019.
do you know
FANNY MENDELSSOhn?
