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He is one of the hardest working.

And one of the best.

The French cellist Gautier Capucon - Savoyarde, not yet 40, married to a childhood friend who also played the cello - plays excellent, is curious, resilient, open, communicative and affectionate.

And happy to travel.

For more than 20 years.

In normal times Capucon jets through the orchestral world with his cello by Matteo Goffriller from 1701 on the expensive flight seat next to him.

As a sought-after soloist and equally sought-after chamber music partner.

For a long time with his violinist brother Renaud, who is even more famous in France, with whom he played a festival in their hometown of Chambéry, which has always remained a familiar one for more than ten years.

Regularly with piano accompanists and friends Martha Argerich, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov or his long-time piano partner Jérome Ducros.

He also gives master classes for excellent young cellists on behalf of the Louis Vuitton Foundation.

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It was like that - until Covid-19 came.

Gautier Capucon was also thwarted.

He was in San Francisco and had just completed the dress rehearsal for one of the last concerts of the departing chief conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra after 25 years there.

This should be followed by a joint, final European orchestral tour.

"After the rehearsal, the management called us together and informed us that everything was canceled," says Capucon.

“We were sitting in Michael’s room, silent and sad, when he suddenly stepped over to the piano and started to play.

It was so intense that we all came to tears. "

Gautier Capuçon plays Saint-Saëns' "Swan"

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Gautier Capucon flew home to Paris while the cell phone kept reporting new rejections.

Suddenly he was on dry land.

Especially mentally.

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“A completely unusual feeling, no schedule, just silence.” Then he sat down at home and played a sentence from one of the Bach cello suites and streamed it on his mobile phone to his Twitter account, similar to what the pianist Igor did in Berlin Levite did.

"It was like a meditation"

He then did that almost every day, healing ritual, for him and for his followers, often as a duo, preferably alone.

"It was like a meditation, so I played all six Bach solo sonatas as a cycle for the first time."

But when he noticed that the summer with its limitations would not be a normal concert time either, he had a radical idea: “I did something that I had wanted to do for a long time, I made the plan to travel to France with the cello, the music to bring for free to the people who were obviously thirsting for it.

As simple as possible."

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And again the virtual community helped.

Gautier Capucon made the plan public.

600 inquiries came in, from villages with 250 inhabitants to big cities.

Initially, Capucon wanted to offer the concerts free of charge, but would definitely charge the municipalities a fee including expenses.

The baker also sold his rolls for money during the pandemic.

So he sent a customary market price list staggered according to inhabitants: 2800 euros for places with less than 3000 people to 9800 euros for cities with more than 60,000 inhabitants.

But that didn't go down well at all.

A shitstorm à la francaise started.

The Gautier Capucon countered as angry as he was courageous: then only for an expense allowance.

Because his longing for interpersonal concert contact had also grown.

It became a five-week summer fairy tale to 21 locations, including the French violin-making mecca Mirecourt in the Vosges.

The resulting television documentary is full of picturesque moments from a summer picture book France.

You don't see the efforts of the ox tour, which the project was.

“The stress was bigger than expected.

I drove the bus myself, and my daughters Fée and Sissi were not used to such restless travel.

There were only very few vacation days for relaxation by the sea. "

And yet: He doesn't want to miss a day of the tour.

"It was an unbelievably nice feeling of closeness, of intensity, of complete openness." There was a lot of improvisation, in village squares, in front of churches, in castles, on a riding school, at the Atlantic harbor, and in the end even on Mont-Saint-Michel, he had never visited before.

Gautier Capuçon is streaming

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“Afterwards I saw a lot of people tears and enthusiasm because it was their first live concert.” And Gautier Capucon always played Bach in the first half and small, popular, flattering encores in the second, as he did on his most recent CD - "it was involuntarily an ideal program".

Now, in the second lockdown, Gautier Capucon is no longer streaming.

“You can't just repeat that time.” But in the summer he will tour the French villages again, this time only for three weeks, in addition to hopefully normal concert activities, without a family and with a driver.

Also with young cellists who are currently applying. “After all, there are still 571 places that want me. And I'm addicted to that state of joy, inspiration and friendship again. This is really a return to the roots of making music. "