The pianist and composer Jérôme Ducros is a multi-faceted artist, performing just as much as a soloist as in chamber music, with a very broad repertoire ranging up to today’s music, in particular through his own compositions.
A much sought-after chamber musician, he is the regular partner in both concerts and on records of Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Philippe Jaroussky, Jérôme Pernoo, or Bruno Philippe… He also appears on the greatest stages such as the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Berliniker Philharmoniker, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus of Vienna, the Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Centre in London, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Mariinsky Theatre of Saint Petersburg, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall of Moscow, the KKL of Lucerne, or the Tokyo City Opera… He also works with Augustin Dumay, Michel Portal, Michel Dalberto, Nicholas Angelich, Antoine Tamestit, Paul Meyer, Gérard Caussé, Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Henri Demarquette, the Quatuor Ébèneor the singers Dawn Upshaw, Diana Damrau, Angelika Kirchslager, Ian Bostridge, Mojca Erdmann, Laurent Naouri or Nora Gubisch…
Still little-known a few years ago, the music Jérôme Ducros writes has little by little become known and recognised by a growing number of musicians, above all since the publication of his Trio for Two Cellos and Piano in 2006 (Billaudot, coll. Gautier Capuçon). Since then, his pieces have been played by numerous performers such as Sergey Malov, Sarah and Deborah Nemtanu, Alina Ibragimova, Gérard Caussé, Adrien Boisseau, Jérôme Pernoo, Henri Demarquette, Gautier Capuçon, Bruno Philippe, Georgi Anichenko, Raphaël Sévère, Nora Gubisch, Laurent Naouri or Antoine Tamestit… Thanks to a series of commissions, he has had the opportunity to write virtuosic works (Encore for cello and piano), chamber music (trios, a quintet), vocal pieces (La mort du poète, two poems by Verhaeren…), or symphonic compositions. In 2013, DECCA bought out the first CD devoted entirely to his chamber music. In 2016, a double concerto for cello, piano and orchestra premiered with the Orchestre de Pau, Fayçal Karoui and Jérôme Pernoo. He has also produced a number of more theoretical works about musical language and its evolution, in particular a lecture at the Collège de France, delivered in 2012 at the invitation of Karol Beffa, and which led to a great deal of debate in artistic circles.
Jérôme Ducros’s discography includes in particular Fauré’s works for piano and orchestra with the Orchestre de Bretagne, conducted by Moshe Atzmon (Timpani, 2008); “Capriccio”, a recital with Renaud Capuçon (Virgin Classics, 2008); “Opium”, French melodies, in company with Philippe Jaroussky, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and Emmanuel Pahud (Virgin Classics, 2009); Beethoven’s works for piano and cello with Jérôme Pernoo (Ligia-Digital, 2009); Guillaume Connesson’s chamber music (Collection Pierre Bergé, 2012 – Reissued by Sony, 2017); “En aparté”, with his own chamber music (Decca, 2013); “Green”, French melodies with Philippe Jaroussky and the Quatuor Ébène (Erato, 2015); “Intuition”, pieces for cello and piano with Gautier Capuçon (Erato, 2018); or Rachmaninov and Miaskovsky, works for cello and piano with Bruno Philippe (Harmonia Mundi, 2019).
Born in 1974, Jérôme Ducros studied piano with François Thinat, Gérard Frémy and Cyril Huvé and took masterclasses with Léon Fleisher, Gyorgy Sebök, Davitt Moroney and Christian Zacharias. The winner of the Umberto Micheli International Piano Competition organised by Maurizio Pollini at la Scala in Milan, he has performed in a large number of halls throughout the world and as a soloist with such orchestras as the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the Orchestre Français des Jeunes or else the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, with such conductors as Alain Altinoglu, Paul Meyer, James Judd, Emmanuel Krivine, Marc Minkowski, or Christopher Hogwood…