LDV102

39 XAVIER PHILLIPS, CÉDRIC TIBERGHIEN ‘Of course you have to champion the music as it is written, but above all as the composer dreamt it.’ This is how he sees his mission as a performing artist. These are the values he transmits. As someone who has built himself over time, through experience, he also wants to make his students stronger. ‘He is a rock, a rare personality, of great human and artistic integrity’, says the pianist François- Frédéric Guy, one of his chamber music partners. To be a permanent member of a trio or quartet implies a long-term commitment, even if not exclusive for some. For his part, Xavier Phillips has chosen to experience music through new encounters, following the affinities and desires he shares with Guy and with so many other musicians, among them Tedi Papavrami, Anne Gastinel, Cédric Tiberghien – and of course Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian. The brothers have made recordings of Kodály and Ravel, and together they give voice to their Armenian roots playing Khachaturian, Babadjanian and Komitas. His musical horizon is vast, indeed infinite. Discovery and novelty make his musician’s heart beat just as fast as the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Offenbach or Fauré, recently joined by those of Marie Jaëll and Charlotte Sohy. Following in the footsteps of Rostropovich, he is a passionate exponent of the concertante music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Dutilleux and Britten. When he and ‘his’ Matteo Gofriller of 1710 take their places in front of the buzzing excitement of the orchestra, an electrifying adventure begins. The feeling of running a formidable danger, never the same, mingles with the exaltation of playing, the heightened pleasure of the sound and of the exchange. With muscles, breath, mind energised, music springing from his bow, he no longer seeks, he finds . . .