Cello Concerto
and solo pieces
Soloists:
On October 2, 2025, the concert of The Modern Composers International Music Festival (ModComFest) will be hosted at the Auditorium du CRR de Paris with an eclectic programme presenting an array of compelling works such as Michel Petrossian’s 8.4 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, ‘La lutte ardente du vert et de l'or’ for piano solo, ‘Stilleven’ for solo violin, ‘Vénus de Lespugue’ for solo viola, Claude Debussy’s ‘L'après-midi d'un faune’ and György Ligeti’s Etude pour piano.
This captivating show features internationally acclaimed Armenian cellist Alexander Chaushian, South Korean pianist Chae-Um Kim, french violonist, viola player, and mezzo-sprano Dorothée Nodé-Langlois, Claire Merlet and Marie Soubestre, accompanied by contemporary French musical choir Ensemble 2E2M and conducted by Léo Margue, highlighting Petrossian’s talent for blending solo virtuosity with orchestral depth.
Programme
Michel Petrossian
8.4, Concerto
for cello and orchestra
"La lutte ardente du vert et de l'or"
for piano solo
Claude Debussy
"L'après-midi d'un faune"
Michel Petrossian
"Stilleven"
for solo violin
- premiere -
"Comme un feu dévorant..."
for soprano and viola
György Ligeti
Etude pour piano
Alexander Chaushian
Cello
Now regarded as one of the finest cellists of the younger generation, Alexander Chaushian has performed extensively throughout the world as a soloist with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Academy of St Martin-in- the-Fields, The London Mozart Players, The Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, The Boston Pops and The Armenian Philharmonic, and has given highly acclaimed performances in such venues as London’s Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall, Sala Verdi Milan, Konzerthaus Vienna, Suntory Hall Japan, the main Carnegie Hall New York, and Symphony Hall Boston.
He performs regularly in festivals throughout the world and is the Artistic Director of the International Pharos Chamber Music Festival in Cyprus and the Yerevan Music Festival in Armenia.
After initial studies in Armenia, Alexander Chaushian studied in the UK at the Menuhin School and the Guildhall School, London. He then pursued advanced studies at the Hochschule Berlin, graduating with distinction in 2005. He is a laureate prize winner of many international competitions including the 12th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the ARD Competition in Germany. As an alumnus of Young Concert Artists, New York, he toured extensively in the USA.
Amongst the many distinguished musicians whom he has collaborated with are Yehudi Menuhin, Julia Fischer, Levon Chilingirian, Yuri Bashmet, Diemut Poppen, François-Frédéric Guy, Emmanuel Pahud. His regular chamber music partner is Yevgeny Sudbin.
Alexander’s recordings include several highly acclaimed CDs for the BIS label in which he is partnered by Yevgeny Sudbin, and his recently released concerto CD with the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, also on BIS, received rave reviews and was selected ‘Album of the Week’ by the Independent.
His many concerts during this season include performances in France, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, China and Japan.
“Alexander Chaushian firmly establishes himself in the echelons of international cellists”
The Strad
Chae-Um Kim
Piano
Pianist Chae-Um Kim is originally from South Korea and is now based in Paris.
She has been invited to numerous contemporary music festivals, including the Boulez Biennale at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Messiaen Festival (La Meije), Traiettorie (Parma), and the New Music Forum (Ljubljana), among others. She performs major works from the contemporary repertoire, both as a soloist and in chamber music and ensemble settings.
She has had the opportunity to collaborate closely with composers such as Philippe Manoury, George Benjamin, Tristan Murail, Bruno Mantovani, and Nina Senk, to name a few.
In 2020, she won Third Prize at the 14th Orléans International Piano Competition (France). There, she captivated the attention of Agata Zubel, whose Chamber Concerto she performed alongside the Ensemble intercontemporain in the competition’s final round. Since then, she has been invited on multiple occasions to perform in a duo with composer and lyric soprano Agata Zubel at various venues across Europe.
Chae-Um Kim pursued her musical training in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe with Kaya Han and Ulrike Meyer, in Italy at the Imola International Academy with Enrico Pace and Boris Petrushansky, and in France with Michel Dalberto, Claire-Marie Le Guay, and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.
She is currently preparing her doctoral thesis at the Conservatoire de Paris and Sorbonne University under the supervision of composer Yan Maresz and musicologist Jean-Marc Chouvel. Chae-Um Kim also shares her expertise through masterclasses and continues to perform in concerts across Europe.
"Her playing intelligently combines the liveliness of her musical spirit with great rigor in execution, always in service of the composers."
— S. Vichard, professor at CNSMDP and CNSMDL, pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain
Claire Merlet
Viola
Claire Merlet graduated from the CNSM in Lyon, studying with Gerard Causse, Tasso Adamopoulos and Zoltan Toth. After CNSM, she joined the Banff Centre of the Arts (Canada) for a postgraduate and then Hochschule of Essen (Germany) where she worked with Pr. Vladimir Mendelssohn. As a soloist of Ensemble 2e2m and Ensemble Alternance she appeared in the most prestigious festivals in France, Europe, Asia and America. Her natural curiosity led her to explore new horizons such as musical theatre and improvisation, giving her the opportunity to collaborate with various choreographers, conductors and stage directors. Passionate about pedagogy, Claire Merlet teaches viola in CRR of Rueil-Malmaison and is a regular teacher at the CNSM Paris.
Dorothée Nodé-Langlois
Violin
Born in France, Dorothée Nodé-Langlois began her musical training at the Toulouse Conservatory, where she studied the violin. After earning her diploma, she continued perfecting her violin skills while simultaneously studying psychology at university. Her pursuit of excellence then led her to the Haute École de Musique de Genève, where she graduated with a Concert Diploma "with distinction." She was also awarded the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Prize before obtaining a Master of Pedagogy in Arts.
To further enrich her musical universe, she deepened her knowledge at the Guildhall School of Music in London and the École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris. Throughout her journey, Dorothée Nodé-Langlois had the privilege of working with renowned musicians such as Gábor Takács-Nagy and Nobuko Imai. It was through her encounter with violinist Florence Malgoire that she discovered her passion for baroque violin, while chamber music became a true source of inspiration.
Beyond her musical engagements, Dorothée Nodé-Langlois is the co-founder of the festival Les Estivales de Megève and the creator of the festival L’Abbé Idéal in Vendée.
Since 2014, she has been a soloist with Ensemble 2e2m, actively participating in numerous contemporary creations and recordings. She is also a member of the Geneva Camerata and the orchestra Les Dissonances, and regularly collaborates with Ensemble Pelléas.
Alongside her artistic activities, Dorothée Nodé-Langlois is deeply committed to pedagogy. She teaches violin at the Conservatoire de Gennevilliers and is actively involved in cultural mediation initiatives, sharing her passion for music and the arts with future generations.
Marie Soubestre
Soprano
Marie Soubestre is a soprano. Her strong affinity for contemporary music has led her to collaborate with numerous composers. In 2022, alongside her close artistic partner Maël Bailly, she created Echo, Narcisse et l’Art d’aimer, a springtime operetta whose libretto they co-wrote with Benjamin Athanase. The soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain enthusiastically embraced this unusual work, premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Among the impactful artistic and personal encounters in Marie Soubestre’s journey is Franck Krawczyk. In June 2023, she took part in two projects under his artistic direction, at La Seine Musicale and Les Bouffes du Nord. In 2015, the Franco-Iranian composer Farnaz Modarresi-Far wrote Che si può fare for her, based on a text by Barbara Strozzi. Marie performed it in the finals of the French Masters of Vocal Art Excellence Competition, which she won in 2019. Their paths continued to cross: she recorded Farnaz’s Ballades oniriques with Collectif G for Radio France, a work that earned Farnaz a prize at the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs.
For her first album, Marie, weine nicht (released in January 2021), Marie turned to composer Graciane Finzi, who contributed Histoires de Monsieur Keuner based on a text by Bertolt Brecht. This debut album is devoted to composer Hanns Eisler. Since 2017, Marie has been pursuing doctoral research in performance: “Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht: An Ethics of Vocal Music.” The project is supervised jointly by Paris-Sorbonne University and the CNSMDP, where she studied under Glenn Chambers from 2009 to 2014.
The Eisler project was born out of a shared passion with pianist Romain Louveau, Marie’s long-time artistic partner. Their repertoire spans from Mozart to Barbara, including Schubert and Liszt, and they regularly perform as a duo at various festivals and venues.
Together with Antoine Thiollier, Romain co-founded the festival La Brèche, in which Marie has been involved since the first edition. A concert in a swimming pool, Elvira’s aria (I Puritani) sung ten times in a row to an audience of eight in a hotel room, outreach in local middle schools, solo guitar songs performed to one listener at a time, improvisations on Iranian poetry—La Brèche is a space where Marie embraces every artistic risk.
Antoine Thiollier is another key collaborator in Marie Soubestre’s artistic life. Directed by him, she played Micaela in Bizet’s Carmen with the ensemble Miroirs Étendus, premiered at the Théâtre du Beauvaisis in 2022. She is also both actress and singer in Un lieu incertain, a stage adaptation of a novel by Fred Vargas, premiered in October 2020. Both works will tour in 2023/2024, continuing a fruitful collaboration that began with Les Constellations, une théorie (2016), an opera by Joséphine Stephenson for which Antoine wrote the libretto and directed, and Victor Bang (2015), a youth show set somewhere between bombings and the stars.
Marie now also performs in a duo with pianist Maroussia Gentet. Their repertoire travels across centuries. Together, they created a recital-performance inspired by Marcel Proust, based on an original text by Marie, in which she humorously recounts her encounter with In Search of Lost Time in a playful mise en abyme. Along with pianist and video artist Matvey Zheleznyakov and violinist Apolline Kirklar, Maroussia and Marie are founding members of the new Collectif G, dedicated to contemporary repertoire and improvisation in both its sonic and performative dimensions.
Léo Margue
Conductor
Conductor, pianist, and saxophonist Léo Margue was nominated in 2024 in the "Revelation, Conductor" category at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. He began his career as an assistant conductor with three French orchestras: the Orchestre National de Lille, the Orchestre de Picardie, and the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France.
Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris in Alain Altinoglu’s class, which he joined in 2013, he later served as assistant conductor to Matthias Pintscher at the Ensemble Intercontemporain from 2019 to 2021. During this time, he became particularly active in contemporary music creation with the LIKΣN project, which he co-founded alongside composer and improviser Timothée Quost.
He has worked as an assistant conductor on several productions at the Opéra National de Paris and has also been a guest conductor with the Orchestre Symphonique de l’Opéra de Toulon, the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie, the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence, and the Orchestre du Pays Basque. He has collaborated with soloists such as Bertrand Chamayou, Francesco Tristano, Marie Oppert, and Aurélien Gignoux.
In 2022, Léo Margue took over the artistic direction of Ensemble 2e2m, ensuring both its historical continuity and its drive for innovation, with the goal of making artistic creation central to the expectations of audiences today and in the future.
2e2m Ensemble
Ensemble 2e2m is one of the first and most prestigious French ensembles dedicated to contemporary musical creation. With several hundred world premieres to its name, it has become a key player on both the national and international music scenes.
Since its founding in 1972 by composer Paul Méfano, 2e2m has continuously reinvented itself, securing a leading role in the landscape of contemporary music.
Based in Champigny-sur-Marne, in the Paris region, since its inception, the ensemble remains deeply committed to fostering musical creation, dissemination, and audience engagement. Through concerts, educational projects, open rehearsals, and encounters with composers and performers, 2e2m provides audiences with insights into new works, helping them to connect with performances and engage closely with the creative process.
Fifty years after its founding, 2e2m continues to pursue its mission with passion: to discover-by embracing a broad spectrum of musical aesthetics-and to share-through long-standing artistic and personal collaborations with musicians and performers.
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