During the Covid pandemic, following the end of the first lockdown in the summer of 2020, Mr Capuçon set off on a special tour, Un été en France (A Summer in France) – a musical journey that allowed families across the country to attend live concerts. He arranged another such tour the following year, this time inviting young instrumentalists and dancers to join him on stage. Following such success, the initiative has continued and, to date, has drawn over 145,000 spectators to 80 concerts held in 66 towns and villages in France, giving 69 emerging artists the chance to share the stage and spotlight at his side. The tour has been the subject of five documentaries, the most recent of which aired between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2025.

Highlights of his orchestral collaborations in recent seasons include concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Christian Thielemann, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Stéphane Denève, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Christoph Koncz, as well as tours with the Filarmonica della Scala conducted by Riccardo Chailly, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (hr-Sinfonieorchester) under Alain Altinoglu and the Rotterdam Philharmonic with conductor Lahav Shani.

He recently toured across Europe and performed at Carnegie Hall with Evgeny Kissin, as well as with Rudolf Buchbinder, Renaud Capuçon and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. Each year, in his capacity as a chamber musician, he is invited to perform with partners such as Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Lisa Batiashvili, Frank Braley, Renaud Capuçon, Jérôme Ducros, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Menahem Pressler, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Yuja Wang, as well as with celebrated quartets, including the Quatuors Artemis, Ébène, Hagen and Modigliani.

Gautier Capuçon also founded the Capucelli ensemble alongside six young cellists, graduates of his “Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle”, an audition-based mentoring programme. Capucelli has performed across Europe and in Taiwan.

The 2025/26 season took Mr Capuçon on tour with the Berliner Philharmoniker and conductor Kirill Petrenko. He also enjoyed a residency with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and performed with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt for the openings of the Dvořák Prague Festival and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. Further, he performed with the Orchestre de Paris under Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the San Francisco Symphony led by Simone Young and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Over the course of his career, Mr Capuçon has forged many deep and lasting musical friendships. He is invited each season to play with the greatest orchestras, including the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Los Angeles and New York, as well as the Chicago, San Francisco and London Symphony Orchestras. He works with conductors such as Lionel Bringuier, Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Tugan Sokhiev.

Memorable moments in chamber music include Mr Capuçon’s concerts with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and violinist Lisa Batiashvili, as well as a performance tour with pianist Nikolai Lugansky.

He also collaborates with many contemporary composers, including Lera Auerbach, Karol Beffa, Esteban Benzecry, Nicola Campogrande, Qigang Chen, Bryce Dessner, Richard Dubugnon, Henri Dutilleux, Jérôme Ducros, Danny Elfman, Thierry Escaich, Joe Hisaishi, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Andrew Norman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Max Richter, Wolfgang Rihm and Jörg Widmann.

Recording exclusively for Erato (Warner Music), Mr Capuçon has won many awards for his extensive and varied discography. Following his album Intuition, his 2020 release, Émotions, featuring works by composers such as Debussy, Schubert and Elgar, topped the sales charts for over 30 weeks, with more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide, and was certified gold in France. In 2022, his subsequent album, entitled Sensations, became the first classical recording to reach number one on the all-genre charts in France. It was followed by Destination Paris in 2023, focused on works dedicated to France’s capital. After his album Elgar & Walton: Cello Concertos, recorded with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra and released in autumn 2024, Mr Capuçon created an album inspired by world premieres, Gaïa, in November 2025. Bringing together works by leading-edge musical minds such as Max Richter, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Gabriela Montero, Joe Hisaishi and Nico Muhly, the album was presented in concert with the San Francisco Symphony in November 2025.

His previous recordings include the Shostakovich concertos with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, works by Saint-Saëns with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France led by Lionel Bringuier, the complete Beethoven sonatas with pianist Frank Braley, Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major with the Quatuor Ébène, Intuition with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under Douglas Boyd, as well as live recordings with Martha Argerich, Renaud Capuçon and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink. He also recorded Beethoven’s piano trios with Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley, sonatas composed by Franck and Chopin with Yuja Wang, as well as a solo album, Souvenirs, with works by Bach, Dutilleux and Kodály alongside a greatest-hits collection, forming a three-disc set released especially for his 40th birthday. Mr Capuçon’s most recent album, Gaïa, features sixteen works – inspired by nature and the Earth – written for him by composers from a broad cultural spectrum.

Gautier Capuçon also appears on a number of live DVDs, such as his performance of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, and that of Brahms’s Double Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili and the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Christian Thielemann.

In addition to his myriad performance commitments, the cellist is an ambassador for the “Orchestre à l’École” non-profit organisation, bringing music to young people in school settings through learning programmes lasting three to four years. Today, there are 1,630 school orchestras composed of some 44,000 children spread across the near-entirety of France. Since its founding, more than 184,000 students have benefitted from this initiative.

In January 2021, Mr Capuçon was promoted to the rank of Chevalier in France’s Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur.

From 2019 through 2025, he hosted Les Carnets de Gautier Capuçon, a popular programme broadcast weekdays from 5 to 6 p.m. on France’s Radio Classique. An established celebrity in his home country, he frequently makes television appearances and has served as a judge on the France 2 television show Prodiges since the programme’s inception in 2014, a broadcast that annually draws more than three million viewers over the year-end holiday season.

Born in Chambéry, France, in 1981, Gautier Capuçon began playing the cello at the age of five with Augustin Lefèbvre and studied in Paris with Annie Cochet-Zakine, Philippe Muller, then in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. He has been awarded several first prizes in international competitions, including the Premier Grand Prix at the Concours International André Navarra in Toulouse.

Regularly invited to perform in Japan, the U.S.A., Canada and throughout Europe, Mr Braley is a partner of the world’s greatest orchestras, such as the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the Orchestres of Bordeaux, Lille, Montpellier and Toulouse, the Orchestre National de Belgique, the Philharmonique de Liège, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Gürzenich Orchester Cologne, the London Philharmonic, the BBC Wales Orchestra, the Royal National Scottish Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Orchestre de la Suisse Italienne, the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra[T1] , the Royal Copenhagen Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and more. He has performed under the direction of conductors such as J-C Casadesus, Stéphane Deneve, Charles Dutoit, Armin Jordan, Hans Graf, Gunther Herbig, Christopher Hogwood, Eliahu Inbal, Marek Janowski, Kiril Karabits, Emmanuel Krivine, Louis Langrée, Kurt Masur, Ludovic Morlot, Paul Mc Creesh, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, John Nelson, Michel Plasson, Yutaka Sado, Michael Schonwandt, Antonio Pappano, Walter Weller and others.

Frank Braley has toured the world: in China with the Orchestre National de France, in Japan and China with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, in Italy with the Orchestre Français des Jeunes and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto. He played at the Tanglewood Festival (U.S.A.) with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf and took part in the inauguration of Carnegie Hall’s new Zankel Hall in New York with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He replaced Martha Argerich at the London Proms with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whung and performed in Amsterdam and Paris with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Bernard Haitink. He has recently performed in Paris at the Salle Pleyel venue with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne (Bach) and with the Orchestre National d’Ile de France (Mozart), at La Folle Journée de Nantes and in Japan with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot (Mozart), then this season [T1] with the Orchestre National de France and the São Paulo Symphony conducted by Stéphane Denève (Poulenc), with the Hong-Kong Sinfonietta, the Seoul Philharmonic and Hans Graf, the New Japan Philharmonic, as well as with his Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie on tour.

In recital, he has performed in Paris, London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hanover and Ferrara, and in duo with Renaud Capuçon in Amsterdam, Athens, Birmingham, Bonn, Brussels, Rome, Florence, Trieste, New York, Washington, Paris and Vienna. In chamber music, his partners include Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Maria João Pires, Gérard Caussé, Eric Le Sage, Paul Meyer and Emmanuel Pahud.

In addition to his regular work as a soloist, he is passionate about original projects: In 2023, he performed Maurice Ravel’s Concerto in G Major for piano and orchestra alongside the Opéra de Paris Ballet and Orchestra for Jérome Robbins’ ballet En Sol. He took part in a complete performance of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at the La Roque d’Anthéron festival, as well as in Rome, Bilbao, Lisbon, Tokyo and Brazil. He has performed the complete sonatas for violin and piano [T1] with Renaud Capuçon in Paris (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées), Bordeaux, Grenoble, Chambéry, Lyon, as well as in London (Wigmore Hall), Luxembourg, Singapore and Hong Kong.

His discography includes: for Harmonia Mundi, the Sonata D.959 and the Klavierstücke D.946 (Diapason d’Or) – which earned him flattering comparisons to Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, Radu Lupu and Andras Schiff –, the piano works of Richard Strauss, Beethoven’s sonatas, a Gershwin recital and Poulenc’s Double Concerto (BMG – Prix Caecilia in Belgium, Diapason d’Or). He took part in Eric Le Sage’s recording of the complete Schumann works. With Naïve: the DVD Liszt- Debussy-Gershwin (“Choc” by Monde de la Musique). For Virgin Classics/Erato, he has recorded chamber music by Ravel, Le Carnaval des Animaux by Saint-Saëns (“Choc” by Monde de la Musique, “Recording of the Month” by Gramophone), Schubert’s Trout, the Schubert trios with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, the Hungarian Dances with Nicholas Angelich and the complete Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano with Renaud Capuçon, unanimously acclaimed by the critics.

After a first Schubert/Debussy/Britten/Carter recording, Frank Braley and Gautier Capuçon recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano for Erato.

The latest Erato release is Beethoven’s Ghost and Archduke trios, with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon (February 2020).

Frank Braley was Musical Director of the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie from 2014 to 2021. He has been Professor at the Conservatoire de Paris since September 2011.