Marc Coppey
Marc Coppey is considered to be one of today’s leading cellists. He first came to the notice of Sir Yehudi Menuhin in the 1988 Leipzig Bach competition where he won the two most important prizes – first prize and special prize for the best Bach performance. He was 18 at the time. He soon after made his Moscow and Paris debuts performing the Tchaïkovsky Trio with Menuhin and Victoria Postnikova, a collaboration documented on film by the famous film director Bruno Monsaingeon. In 1989 Mstislav Rostropovitch invited Marc to the Evian Festival and from that moment on his solo career quickly developed. He performs regularly as a soloist with leading orchestras in collaboration with numerous distinguished conductors – Eliahu Inbal, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Emmanuel Krivine, Alan Gilbert, Christian Arming, Lionel Bringuier, Alain Altinoglu, Michel Plasson, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Theodor Guschlbauer, John Nelson, Raymond Leppard, Erich Bergel, Philippe Entremont, Pascal Rophé, Philippe Bender, Paul McCreesh, Yutaka Sado, Kirill Karabits and Asher Fisch.
Marc Coppey has embraced both Baroque and Contemporary music, along with mainstream Romantic repertoire, from the very begining of his career. A passionate chamber musician, he has extensively explored the cello’s repertoire with such renonwed artists as Maria-João Pires, Stephen Kovacevich, Nicholas Angelich, Aleksandar Madzar, Michel Beroff, Kun-Woo Paik, Finghin Collins, Michel Dalberto, Peter Laul, François-Frédéric Guy, Nelson Goerner, Augustin Dumay, Vadim Gluzman, Victoria Mullova, Liana Gourdjia, Valeriy Sokolov, Ilya Gringolts, Alina Pogostkina, Tedi Papavrami, David Grimal, Lawrence Power, Maxim Rysanov, Gérard Caussé, Janos Starker, Marie-Pierre Langlamet, Michel Portal, Romain Guyot, Emmanuel Pahud as well as the Takacs, Tokyo, Prazak, Modigliani, Ebène and Talich Quartets. From 1995 to 2000 he was cellist of the Ysaÿe Quartet, performing in many of the world’s most prestigious concert venues.
Marc Coppey appears regularly in the most prestigious concert halls of London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Dublin, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Tokyo, New York, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Seoul. He is a regular guest of the festivals of Radio-France Montpellier, Musica Strasbourg, Besançon, La Roque d’Anthéron, Monte-Carlo, the Nantes and Lisbon “Folle Journée”, Bach Fest in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Midem, Kaposvar, Campos do Jordao, Kuhmo, Korsholm, West Cork and Prades.
The breadth of Marc Coppey’s repertoire is proof of his profound inquisitiveness: he frequently performs the Bach suites and main stream concerto repertoire, but is also dedicated to performing less well-known works. Performing and promoting contemporary music is very important to him and many composers have dedicated works to him, including Auerbach, Bertrand, Christian, Dufourt, Durieux, Fedele, Fénelon, Hurel, Jarrell, Jolas, Krawczyk, Lenot, Leroux, Mantovani, Meïmoun, Monnet, Pauset, Poppe, Pécou, Reverdy, Staud, Tanguy, Verrières. He gave world premières of concertos by Lenot, Tanguy and Monnet, as well as giving French premieres of concertos by Carter, Mantovani and Tüür.
In November 2009 Marc Coppey was chosen to perform Bach in the Place de La Concorde in Paris to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. In 2015, the Arte tv channel filmed him live performing the complete Bach Suites in one evening in Lyon.
In March 2015 he premièred ten works for solo cello by some of today’s most prominent composers as a tribute to Pierre Boulez on his 90th birthday at the Paris Philharmonie. The programme was recorded and released in January 2017 on the Megadisc label.
Marc Coppey’s recordings have received critical acclaim worldwide. They include works by Beethoven, Debussy, Emmanuel, Fauré, Grieg and Strauss, for the Auvidis, Decca, Harmonia Mundi and K617 labels. He has recorded the complete Bach Suites (awarded Télérama’s ffff), a CD dedicated to Dohnanyi (awarded “10 de Répertoire”), and an album devoted to the great Russian cello sonatas, accompanied by pianist Peter Laul for the Aeon/Outhere label, as well as the Schubert Quintet with the Prazak Quartet for the Praga label and Martin Matalon’s concerto for Accord / Universal. More recently he has recorded Dutilleux cello concerto and the Caplet Epiphanie with the Liège Orchestra under Pascal Rophé’s direction which received a BBC Music Magazine *****, a Diapason d’Or and a “Choc” in the Monde de la Musique, followed by recordings of the Brahms Sonatas and Schubert (Arpeggione) with pianist Peter Laul, also for Aeon, and world premières of the concertante works of Théodore Dubois on the Mirare label.
In 2016, his recording of the Haydn and CPE Bach cello concertos with the Zagreb Soloists was released by Audite. His recording of Dvořák’s cello concerto for the same label with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by Kirill Karabits has received wide international critical acclaim. In the spring of 2018 Audite will release a Beethoven sonata cycle recorded live in the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Hall with pianist Peter Laul.
Marc Coppey is also deeply committed to teaching: he is cello professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris and gives masterclasses worldwide. He is artistic director of the Musicales de Colmar chamber music festival, and since 2011 musical director of the Zagrebacki solisti (Zagreb Soloists).
He was made Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French culture ministry in 2014.
Marc Coppey was born in Strasbourg where he studied at the Conseravtory before attending the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur and the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
He performs on a rare cello by Matteo Goffriller (Venice 1711).
