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Camille Thomas - The Chopin Project is the WFMT: Featured New Release

It’s simple: Camille Thomas has not one memory without music. Nor any memories without a cello either, come to that matter. From the age of four, when she first asked if she might play an instrument, it was a cello, and only a cello, that she wanted to learn.  Right from that very moment, it seemed so obvious that she was destined to meet the cello. The young girl literally had a passion for this instrument and she was a quick learner, first joining the Choir of Radio France’s Maîtrise school, and then beginning her music studies. And, also obviously, her passion was confirmed, so much so that this young Franco-Belgian quickly felt a desire that was to be satisfied elsewhere. She left Paris for Berlin. “I could feel a need to leave my comfort zone. Russian art fascinated me: Dostoyevsky in literature; Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky notably for such vibrations in the sounds. So leaving to go to Berlin,” she remembers, “was a little like getting closer to them...”

That the young cellist was precociously gifted leaves no doubt. Her musical education was still unfinished when, at the age of fifteen, she gave her first concerts, won her first competitions, and played in the most prestigious venues of Berlin and elsewhere. And then came the release of a first album early in 2014. She would earn a nomination in the category “Instrumental soloist revelation” at the “Victoires de la Musique” awards in France, and then win the “New Talent of the Year” award from the European Broadcasting Union (the radio equivalent of the Eurovision Contest.) And her career continued with the release of a second album. Her international consecration would come in 2017. Deutsche Grammophon had not signed a cellist for twenty years (and never a female cellist!), and now the prestigious label had offered Camille Thomas an exclusive recording-contract. It was a childhood dream come true, and two albums were released, one of them the very well-received “Voice of Hope" in 2020. But just before that, fate would take another hand in the future of Camille Thomas…

She is a cello virtuoso, and had always greatly admired the work of Chopin. Even if the latter had composed essentially for piano, one of his late pieces of music had been the famous Sonata for Cello and Piano op. 65, and Camille had been working with that piece for many years. She knew it well enough to have learned that the Polish pianist and composer had dedicated opus 65 to his friend, the cellist Auguste Franchomme. So you can imagine how amazed Camille was when, one morning in 2019, she received an email from the Nippon Music Foundation saying they were willing to lend her the 1730 Feuermann Stradivarius, one of the most beautiful cellos in the world. And it was the instrument that had belonged to… Franchomme! As Camille says, “It was an incredible thing to happen, and naturally I had no alternative but to make a record devoted to Chopin... and to this sonata in particular. But I didn’t have anything more precise about that in my mind until lockdown came, and that would give us some time...”

That inevitable hiatus lasted for months, and Camille would put them to advantage by turning to social media, where she regularly posted videos of herself playing on rooftops in Paris. It would become her way of continuing to share the music that people were missing so much in the absence of live concerts. The images of Camille had a rare poetry to them, and they quickly spread worldwide. Given that most of our cultural life remained cloistered after lockdown came to an end, Camille had another idea, one that would also go round the world: “Seeing all those places for art that remained closed, just when we needed more than ever to feed our souls, to go out and find beautiful things... it all made me terribly sad. So I contacted all the museums in Paris and asked if I could come to play, and be filmed by Martin Mirabel’s cameras. There was the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the Arab World Institute, the Château de Versailles… We were given access to twelve absolutely incredible places, and they were all deserted! It was no doubt one of the most powerful experiences of my whole life.”

Those were long, highly unusual months, but Camille didn’t abandon Chopin for an instant. To have a better idea of what her future recording would be, she did some intensive research. And as Camille says, “It provided me with almost as many emotions! At the BNF, where all of Chopin’s manuscripts are conserved, I discovered some genuine treasures. I found compositions written in Franchomme's hand. Plus some previously unknown transcriptions of Chopin's music that we owe to his cellist friend. It was absolutely incredible. Thanks to these beautiful finds, I definitely had to take my project further.” And that was how "The Chopin Project” we have today came into being... and how we now come to a triple album with 220 minutes of music where we can hear the cellist unfolding the whole intense, overwhelming story of Chopin. This is in fact a very real anthology, and Camille Thomas has revisited it in the quivering perspective of the cello.

In its first part, “Chopin for Cellists” puts together the composer’s most famous pieces, and we can rediscover them in a new light thanks to transcriptions that have come down to us through history, from those of Franchomme or Glazunov up to Camille’s own creations. “Complete Chamber Music,” as its name implies, brings together all of Chopin’s chamber music, in other words, three pieces for cello and piano, two of which were composed with Auguste Franchomme, and his Trio op.8. Lastly, “The Franchomme Legacy” gathers all the works by that cellist plus the ones transcribed by his pianist friend. 
And there’s a nice surprise as a bonus: “These compositions may well have been written almost two hundred years ago, but they still remain just as contemporary,” explains Camille. “They speak of the same sentiments as works of today: love, tenderness, melancholy... So I was very keen to establish a bridge linking them to today's music.” And what better way could there be to do that, than by taking up “Jane B”, the famous Serge Gainsbourg song that he based on the N°4 Prelude op. 28?” The reprise is absolutely bewitching, especially when the voice of Jane Birkin herself joins the voice of the Feuermann Stradivarius played by Camille Thomas.

But the “Chopin Project” is not merely a vibrant tribute to the great pieces of two musicians whose work has come down to us through time. This is also a very moving ode to friendship. Firstly that between Chopin and Franchomme, which lasted from the day the former arrived in France from Poland until his final hours when, in October 1849, the cellist played for him the second and third movements of the Sonata for Cello they had composed together. And then there are the friendships of Camille. “This album fills me with emotions. For one, I’m playing the instrument that no doubt accompanied Chopin until his last breath. But also because it has allowed me to have my close friends around me: the pianists Julien Brocal, Julien Libeer and Lucas Debargue, or again the violinist Daniel Hope, who incidentally plays an instrument that might well have known Chopin too! And to crown it all, there is the joy of having my two great teachers Frans Helmerson and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, both of whom also accepted to accompany me in this project.” That final friendship bears witness to the strength of the cello, as four generations come together here in a direct line relating Jaemin Han, a sixteen year-old Korean prodigy, to Camille’s two masters, Helmerson et Schmidt, both of whom studied under Rostropovich.

Immediately after the release of this triple album, Camille Thomas will leave on tour to perform on some of the greatest stages in the world. She will cause the music of Chopin and Franchomme to shine again, thanks to the very strong message she has always carried with her, especially in these tormented times. “Art is a response to suffering, and to all those existential questions for which we have no answer,” says this remarkable artist who has made these words of Dostoyevsky her credo: “Beauty will save the world.” 


For June 22, 2023, Camille Thomas: The Chopin Project is the WFMT: Chicago ‘Featured New Release.’ WFMT writes…..“The Chopin Project” is French-Belgian cellist Camille Thomas’s most ambitious project to date, comprising a trio of albums that pay tribute to Chopin’s connection to the cello. In “The Franchomme Legacy,” the first chapter of the trilogy, Thomas explores the relationship between Chopin and his close friend and cellist Auguste Franchomme. She reveals the influence Franchomme had on Chopin’s music and the deep connection between these two great musicians. The second chapter offers Chopin’s complete works for chamber ensemble, featuring Thomas and a group of world-class musicians. Finally, the third chapter presents an enchanting collection of Chopin’s most famous works arranged for cello. Thanks to the Nippon Music Foundation, Thomas performs on the magnificent Stradivarius cello that was once played by Franchomme himself.