Firmly established as one of the world’s greatest violinists, Renaud Capuçon’s career both on the stage and as a recording artist has spanned a wide gamut of concerto repertoire, chamber music and recitals. He has a reputation for impeccable performances and fine interpretations of classics and lesser-known repertoire, from his most recent albums with critically-acclaimed readings of the Bach Violin Concertos and the Vasks Violin Concerto, and a recital disc with Khatia Buniatishvili, to the Beethoven/Korngold and Brahms/Berg concertos, Renaud has become known for the breadth of his repertoire, his world-class chamber music partners, and the quality of his playing.

Celebrating his 40th birthday this year, Capuçon presents three world-premiere recordings of violin concertos written for and dedicated to him by three of today’s most exciting composers: Wolfgang Rihm, Pascal Dusapin and Bruno Mantovani - with the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, Wiener Symphoniker and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under the conductors Myung-Whun Chung and Philippe Jordan.

Reviews

All three of these violin concertos were composed expressly for Renaud Capuçon, and all take his fiercely impassioned lyrical playing as their starting point. ... it’s Pascal Dusapin’s Aufgang that provides the real substance here, and comes the closest to a traditional three-movement concerto. It was first performed in 2015 too, though its roots go back to 2008, when Dusapin started work on a violin concerto that he then set aside because he couldn’t find a soloist who was prepared to learn it. As completed now for Capuçon, though, it’s a wonderfully coherent work of irresistible sweep; the central slow movement, longer than the two outer movements together, provides the real expressive weight, but Dusapin’s solo part seems constantly to be reinventing and reconfiguring many of the traditional rhetorical devices of violin concerto writing; Capuçon makes every one of them wonderfully vivid. Andrew Clements

The Guardian 2 November 2016