DOMAINE DE VILLARCEAUX
CHANTS DE PRINTEMPSSUNDAY, JULY 6TH 2025 - 17:00
Fiona McGown, mezzo-soprano
Manon Galy, violin
Raphaëlle Moreau, violin
Léa Hennino, viola
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
David Kadouch, piano
Inspired by the title of Lili Boulanger’s famous work D’un matin de printemps, this program invites us to take a musical stroll through spring, that season of renewal. Spring, like a mirror of the inner evolution of each composer, finds in their music a vibrant tribute to nature, to the first stirrings of life, and to the beauty that is born after winter.
The excerpts from Fanny Mendelssohn’s Das Jahr, March and May, masterfully capture this transition between winter and spring. March evokes the still icy atmosphere of a month at war with winter, while May blossoms into an exuberant flowering. These two contrasting pieces represent the first stages of renewal. With Le Paon de Gopal by Madeleine Dedieu Peters, nature regains its colors, like the peacock which, after its winter moult, regains its finery in spring. This short piece for trio – viola, cello and piano – embodies the rebirth and rediscovered beauty of the season. Lili Boulanger’s spring is that of 1917, when the young composer wrote one of the only optimistic pieces of her short life, expressed through an almost elegiac lyrical theme. With Avril de paix, Simone Blanchard adopts a contemplative approach to spring. The string quartet reflects a month in which nature, calm and reconciled with itself, blossoms in an atmosphere of serenity. But “Enchantment ceases at the thought of countries where war has destroyed spring”, writes the composer on the score, before continuing: “the wanderer (…) lets his sadness speak, tinged with bitterness because of so much sacrificed beauty…”. The music follows the story – or the story the music, it’s hard to tell…
PROGRAMME

CHANTS DE PRINTEMPS
Works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Madeleine Dedieu-Peters, Lili Boulanger, Mary Howe…
ARTISTS

FIONA MCGOWN
Mezzo-soprano Fiona McGown began singing at the age of 12 with the Paris Opera Children’s Choir. She is a graduate of the Hochschule Leipzig and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Her operatic roles include Dorabella in Cosi fan Tutte and Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Cybèle in Lully’s Atys, Diane and Oenone in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie and Orphée in Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice. She can also be heard in Zemlinsky’s Le Nain, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. She performs on numerous opera stages in France (Philharmonie de Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Opéra-Comique, Auditorium de Radio France, Opéra Royal de Versailles…) and abroad (Victoria Hall in Geneva, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Bruges, Institut Français in London…). She sings under the baton of Leonardo García Alarcón, Alexis Kossenko, Raphaël Pichon… and collaborates with directors Katie Mitchell (Trauernacht), Jean-Yves Ruf (La Finta Pazza), Jean Bellorini (Erismena), Dominique Pitoiset (Cosi fan tutte) and Romeo Castellucci (Mozart’s Requiem). Passionate about chamber music, Fiona regularly performs in duo with pianist Célia Oneto Bensaid. The dedicatee and creator of several pieces by composer Camille Pépin, she sings Chamber Music in a critically acclaimed disc: fff Télérama, Choc Classica, Choix de France Musique. For the 2024/2025 season, Fiona sings at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Opéra de Lille and on tour in Europe (Geneva, Brussels, London…).
MANON GALY
Named “Instrumental Soloist Revelation” at the 2022 Victoires de la Musique awards, Manon Galy trained at the Toulouse and Paris CRRs before entering the CNSMDP, then the Munich Hochschule with Julia Fischer, the Philippe Jaroussky Academy and the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Waterloo, where she is currently in residence with the Zeliha trio. She is a prizewinner in numerous international competitions, including the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition in 2021, where she won 1st prize and all the special prizes in sonata with Jorge Gonzalez-Buajasan, and the Banque Populaire, Safran and Charles Oulmont foundations, as well as AMOPA. Manon performs regularly as a soloist with various international orchestras, collaborating with such great conductors as Renaud Capuçon, Sacha Goetzel, Aziz Shokhakimov, Victorien Vanoosten, Gabor Takáks-Nagy, Bertrand De Billy, David Molard-Soriano and Simone Menezes, among others. A dedicated chamber musician, Manon Galy founded Trio Zeliha in 2018 with Jorge Gonzalez-Buajasan and Maxime Quennesson. Their first disc, released in 2020 on the Mirare label, was critically acclaimed (5 diapasons, 5 stars from Classica, Editor’s choice at Gramophone magazine…), as was their latest album, released in May 2024, also garnering 5 stars from Classica, 4T Télérama and “Choix de Laure Mézan” in Pianiste magazine. “Nuits Parisiennes”, released in February 2023 on the Aparté label and born of the duo formed with pianist Jorge Gonzalez-Buajasan, won a Diapason d’Or de l’année, 5 stars from Classica and 4T Télérama. As a soloist and with the Zeliha trio, Manon has joined the “Beau Soir productions” production company, headed by Renaud Capuçon.
RAPHAËLLE MOREAU
LÉA HENNINO
Léa Hennino performs chamber music all over the world with renowned artists such as the Quatuor Modigliani, Eric Le Sage, Emmanuel Pahud, Adam Laloum, Francois Salque, David Kadoush, Marie et Guillaume Chilemme, Victor Julien-Lafferière, David Grimal, Edgar Moreau, Gauthier Capuçon, Sarah Nemtanu, Yan Levionnois, Nelson Goerner, Marc Coppey, Anne Queffelec, Augustin Dumay… As a soloist, she gives recitals and performs Martinü’s Concerto-Rhapsody in the Czech Republic and Mozart’s Symphonie concertante with the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. She is regularly invited to perform as solo viola with orchestras, notably Les Dissonances under the baton of David Grimal. Léa collaborates regularly with cellist Héloïse Luzzati on her project La Boîte à Pépites and her Festival Un Temps pour Elles, whose ambition is to promote and disseminate the repertoire of women composers, with a view to greater equality in musical and artistic programming. An associate artist of the Ensemble I Giardini, they recorded the album Nuits with Véronique Gens (diapason d’or, choc classica, clé de resmusica, choix de france musique) and an album devoted to the music of Caroline Shaw (2022). Since 2023, Léa has also been a member of the Fidelio String Quartet with violinists Camille Fonteneau, Marie-Astrid Hulot and cellist Maria Andréa Mendoza. Their collaboration celebrates works from the repertoire, but also from unknown composers. Léa plays a 2013 viola by Patrick Robin, generously loaned by Renaud Capuçon, and a bow by Thierry Doison made in Lille.

HÉLOÏSE LUZZATI
Héloïse Luzzati is founder and director of the Cité des Compositrices. After her studies at the CNSMDP, she played in orchestras such as Les Dissonances, the Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Paris and the Orchestre National de France. In 2020, she founded the video channel La Boîte à Pépites, for which she writes and directs documentaries on female composers. A few months later, she launched the Festival Un Temps pour Elles, followed by its digital counterpart, the La Boîte à Pépites Advent Calendar. La Boîte à Pépites became a record label in 2022, with a highly successful first release devoted to Charlotte Sohy. A sheet music publishing house, La Boîte à Pépites Pubslihing, was created in its wake in 2023. Now internationally recognized for her expertise on women composers, Héloïse Luzzati collaborates with the most prestigious cultural institutions as part of the Cité des Compositrices initiatives: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée d’Orsay, Philharmonie de Paris, Abbaye de Royaumont… A passionate chamber musician, Héloïse also pursues her career as a cellist alongside such performers as Xavier Phillips, Célia Oneto Bensaid, David Kadouch, Raphaëlle Moreau, Manon Galy, Léa Hennino, Elsa Dreisig… Recognized for her work in favor of greater equality in musical programming, Héloïse Luzzati was named one of the “100 Women of Culture” in 2022, and was named “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Ministry of Culture.
DAVID KADOUCH
Born in 1985, David Kadouch trained with Odile Poisson at the C.N.R. in Nice, with Jacques Rouvier at the CNSM in Paris, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia School in Madrid, and with Murray Perahia, Maurizio Pollini, Maria-Joao Pires, Daniel Barenboim, Vitaly Margulis, Itzhak Perlman, Elisso Virsaladze and Emanuel Krasovsly. At 13, he played at New York’s Metropolitan Hall, and at 14 at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory. In 2005, he was a guest at the Salzburg and Verbier Academies (Prix d’Honneur in 2009), then a finalist in the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2009. Since 2007, he has been a prizewinner at the ADAMI and Natixis Banques Populaires Foundations, as well as “Révélation Jeune Talent” at the 2010 Victoires de la Musique awards and “Young Artist of the Year” at the 2011 Classical Music Awards. David Kadouch is a guest of numerous festivals, and regularly performs chamber music with his partners Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Edgar Moreau, Nikolaj Znaider, Antoine Tamestit, Frans Helmerson, Victor Julien-Laferrière, Yuri Revich, Sol Gabetta, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Michel Dalberto, as well as the Ebène, Modigliani, Quiroga and Ardeo Quartets. He also plays as a soloist with the most prestigious international orchestras. David gives numerous solo and duo recitals with Edgar Moreau in Europe and elsewhere. Among his outstanding recordings, his “Révolution” disc (Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Janacek, Dussek, Rzewski), was awarded the Choc Classica of the year 2019 and widely acclaimed by the critics. In 2022, he recorded a disc devoted to female composers from the period of Flaubert’s novel “Mme Bovary” for the Mirare label.
HAVE YOU HEARD OF MARY HOWE ?
Mary Howe (1882 – 1964)
Elegy
Alexandre Pascal, violin
Héloïse Luzzati, cello
Célia Oneto Bensaid, piano