Gautier Capuçon is one of the foremost cello ambassadors in the 21st century. Performing worldwide with leading conductors and instrumentalists, he also created the Fondation Gautier Capuçon in January 2022, dedicated to supporting outstanding young musicians between the ages of 18 and 25 as they launch their careers, extending his strong commitment to education and mentorship. As of now, the Foundation is counting 36 laureates.

Winner of numerous awards, Capuçon is celebrated for the depth and intensity of his interpretations, his dazzling virtuosity, and the rich, resonant sound.

In the summer of 2020, during the pandemic, Capuçon launched Un été en France, a musical journey that brought live performances to families across the country. He repeated the project in 2021, this time also featuring young instrumentalists and dancers in his concerts. To date, the initiative has gathered more than 145.000 people in audience, presented 80 concerts in 66 towns and villages, and showcased 69 emerging artists alongside him. Five documentaries have already been devoted to the tour, with an upcoming new one to be broadcasted between Christmas and New Year 2025.

Recent orchestral highlights include performances with the Vienna Philharmonic (Christian Thielemann), Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Andris Nelsons), Philadelphia Orchestra (Stéphane Denève), and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (Christoph Koncz), as well as tours with the Filarmonica della Scala Milan (Chailly), hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt (Altinoglu), and the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Lahav Shani.

Capuçon recently toured Europe with Evgeny Kissin, concluding with a performance at Carnegie Hall. He also embarked on a separate tour with Rudolf Buchbinder, Renaud Capuçon, and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; along concerts with Alexandre Kantorow and the Hagen Quartett. His chamber music partners have included Nicholas Angelich, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Frank Braley, Jérôme Ducros, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Leonidas Kavakos, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Menahem Pressler, and the Artemis, Ébène, Hagen, and Modigliani Quartets.
He has also toured with Capucelli – a seven-cello ensemble he founded with alumni of his Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle – through Europe and Taiwan.

In the 2025/26 season, Capuçon will tour with Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko – starting with the Europakonzert from Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt. As this season’s Artist-in-Residence with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, he will perform under the batons of Finnegan Downie Dear, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Daniele Gatti, including the New-Year’s-Eve concert and a European tour. Further orchestral engagements during the season include appearances with the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Alain Altinoglu) at both the Dvo?ák Prague Festival’s Opening Concert and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Orchestre de Paris (Andrés Orozco-Estrada), the San Francisco Symphony (Simone Young), the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (Paavo Järvi), as well as concerts across Asia.
Chamber music highlights include a trio tour with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lisa Batiashvili across the most prestigious European concert venues and a recital tour with Nikolai Lugansky.

Always eager to explore and expand the cello repertoire, Capuçon performs both great classics and new works each season. Current projects include music by Lera Auerbach, Karol Beffa, Esteban Benzecry, Nicola Campogrande, Qigang Chen, Bryce Dessner, Richard Dubugnon, Henri Dutilleux, Jérôme Ducros, Danny Elfman, Thierry Escaich, Joe Hisaishi, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Andrew Norman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Max Richter, Wolfgang Rihm, and Jörg Widmann.

An exclusive recording artist for Erato (Warner Music), Capuçon has a rich discography that has earned numerous awards. Following Intuition, his 2020 release Émotions (featuring works by Debussy, Schubert, Elgar and others) reached gold status in France, topping the charts for over 30 weeks and selling more than 100,000 copies worldwide. His next album, Sensations (2022), became the first classical recording to reach No. 1 in France’s all-genre charts, followed by Destination Paris (2023). His most recent release (autumn 2024) features Elgar and Walton concertos with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra. Capuçon’s cello becomes the voice of the Earth in an inspired album of world premieres, Gaïa – to be released in November 2025. Featuring works by Max Richter, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Gabriela Montero, Joe Hisaishi, Nico Muhly, among others, the album will be released in concert with San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in November 2025.

Earlier recordings include Shostakovich with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Saint-Saëns with Lionel Bringuier and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the complete Beethoven Sonatas with Frank Braley, Schubert’s String Quintet with the Ébène Quartet, Intuition with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and Douglas Boyd, and live recordings with Martha Argerich, Renaud Capuçon, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink. He has also recorded Beethoven’s Piano Trios with Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley, sonatas by Franck and Chopin with Yuja Wang, the solo album Souvenirs (Bach, Dutilleux, Kodály), and a special “Best Of” release for his 40th birthday. His upcoming album will feature 16 new works written for him by composers from diverse cultures, inspired by nature and the earth.

Capuçon also appears on live DVDs, including Haydn’s Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and Brahms’s Double Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and Christian Thielemann.

Parallelly, Capuçon serves as an ambassador of Orchestre à l’École, an association that introduces music into schools through three- to four-year learning cycles. Today, 1.630 school orchestras across 100 French departments involve 44.000 children, and more than 184.000 pupils have already benefited from this vital program.

From 2019 to 2025, he has hosted Les carnets de Gautier Capuçon on Radio Classique every weekday from 5–6 pm. A household name in France, he frequently appears on television and has been a juror on France 2’s Prodiges since its creation in 2014, a program that attracts more than three million viewers annually at Christmas.

Born in Chambéry, Capuçon began the cello at the age of four with Augustin Lefèbvre, later studying in Paris with Annie Cochet-Zakine and Philippe Muller, and in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. Today, he collaborates with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Lionel Bringuier, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Philippe Jordan, Cristian M?celaru, Klaus Mäkelä, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Lorenzo Viotti, and Tugan Sokhiev.