Renaud Capuçon Deals with Celebrity

Last spring violinist Renaud Capuçon married Laurence Ferrari, the star anchor of the evening news on French channel TF1. The event was accompanied by a French media circus, which continues to dog Capuçon, but only in France, as he notes in comments for an article by Olivier Olgan (Renaud Capuçon, le violon dans le vent, October 23) for Le Figaro (my translation):

Renaud Capuçon arrives punctually for his interview. Courteous. Normal. Before sitting down, he looks a place to secure his cumbersome violin case, protecting his indispensable partner, the magnificent "Panette" Guarneri del Gesù, which once belonged to Isaac Stern. "The hubbub around my wedding has changed neither my way of living nor my way of making music," he says emphatically. "Abroad, no one knows who my wife is. When we travel beyond a certain group of the press, Laurence is just a journalist and I am just a musician." [...]

With his accomplices -- his brother Gautier, Nicolas Angelich, Gérard Caussé, Jérôme Ducros, Martha Argerich -- he has put together one of the most beautiful chamber music discographies. With them, he knows that he can test the rules and mount projects that others would have believed doomed to failure, [...] a complete Brahms chamber music cycle begun last year at the Salle Pleyel and completed last weekend, or the festival Rencontres artistiques de Bel-Air à Chambéry, which his friends and family have brought to life for some fifteen years. "2010 will be the last season," he says. "What was born out of friendship, the emotion and love of music, should not end in drudgery. I prefer to be nostalgic than to feel the regret of putting on one season too many. We brought the greatest musicians there (Barenboim, Argerich), and I do not want something that was a beautiful utopia to slip away."