Renaud Capucon

Capuçon was born in Chambéry on 27 January 1976. He entered the conservatory in his native city at the age of 4, and then the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP) at the age of 14 where he studied under Gérard Poulet. Three years later he completed his studies there, winning first prize in both chamber music and violin.

The prizes he has won include the 1992 first in chamber music and 1993 first in violin at CNSMD de Paris, then in 1995, the prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 2000, he was named talent of the year by Victoires de la musique classique, which in 2005 awarded him the title "instrumental soloist of the year". In 2006 he received the Georges Enescu violin prize from the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique.

In 1996, he founded an annual festival at La Ravoire near Chambéry, the Rencontres artistiques de Bel-Air, which ended in 2010. It welcomed the most important chamber players including Jean-Pierre Wallez, Michel Dalberto, Martha Argerich, Stephen Kovacevich, Augustin Dumay, Gérard Caussé, Paul Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud, Katia and Marielle Labèque.

After playing a Vuillaume, a Guadagnini, and then a Stradivarius, in 2005 the Banque de Suisse Italienne BSI loaned him a Guarnerius, the "Panette" of 1737 that had belonged to Isaac Stern.

On 25 May 2009, he participated in the film 7.57 am-pm directed by Simon Lelouch, in which he performed the Melody of Orpheus by Gluck on his Guarnerius in the middle of a crowd of commuters on Line 6 of the Paris Métro, unrecognized and unremarked by the passing crowd.

He has been in a relationship with journalist Laurence Ferrari since 2008, and they married on 3 July 2009. They have a son Elliott born 8 November 2010. His brother is the cellist Gautier Capuçon.

In June 2011, the French government named him Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

In 2013 he began directing an Easter festival in Aix-en-Provence.

On 10 April 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, Capuçon was one of a handful of people to take part in a Good Friday service led by Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, which was still being rebuilt after the Notre-Dame de Paris fire a year earlier. All wore protective clothing. Capuçon provided the sole musical accompaniment.