Born in Chambéry in 1976, Renaud Capuçon studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris from the age of fourteen. After five years of prize-winning studies, he moved to Berlin to study with Thomas Brandis and Isaac Stern. In 1997, Claudio Abbado chose him as concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, enabling him to perfect his musical education alongside the Maestro, as well as with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa and Franz Welser-Möst.
Since then, Renaud Capuçon has been one of the most sought-after soloists, playing with the most prestigious orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestrae de Chambre d'Europe, the Filarmonica della Scala, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. He maintains close ties with a large number of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, Stéphane Denève, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Harding and Paavo Järvi. In 2022-2023, he will make his Carnegie Hall debut with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as part of a tour of the United States.
As a passionate chamber musician, he performs regularly with partners such as Martha Argerich, the late Nicholas Angelich, Kit Armstrong, Khatia Buniatishvili, Frank Braley, Yefim Bronfman, Hélène Grimaud, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Maria João Pires, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuri Bashmet, Myung-Whun Chung, Yo-Yo Ma, Mischa Maisky, Michael Pletnev and his brother Gautier Capuçon, at the most famous festivals: Aix-en-Provence, La Roque d'Anthéron, Hollywood Bowl, Tanglewood, Gstaad, Lucerne, Verbier, Salzburg, Rheingau and the Enescu Festival in Bucharest. Renaud Capuçon has also represented France at prestigious international events: he played under the Arc de Triomphe with Yo-Yo Ma for the commemoration of Armistice Day in the presence of over 80 heads of state, and played at the G7 summit in Biarritz.
Since 2021, Renaud Capuçon has been artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. Released in September 2021, the first CD recorded with the Vaud-based ensemble features works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. A second CD, devoted to Vivaldi's Four Seasons and two concertos by the Chevalier de Saint-George, will be released in September 2022. Renaud Capuçon has also been artistic director of the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad since 2016, as well as of the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence, which he founded in 2013.
Renaud Capuçon has an extensive discography. Recent releases for Erato/Warner include a recording of Elgar's violin concerto and sonata with the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle, a recording of works by Saint-Saëns with Daniel Harding, Bertrand Chamayou and Edgar Moreau, and 'Un violon à Paris', a disc recorded with Guillaume Bellom, which presents a wide range of shorter works arranged for violin and piano. Devoted to film music, his album 'Au cinéma' was released in 2018 to enthusiastic critical acclaim.
In 2017, Renaud Capuçon founded the Lausanne Soloists, an ensemble made up of students from the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU), where he has taught since 2014. He plays the Guarneri del Gesù 'Panette' (1737), which belonged to Isaac Stern. He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite in June 2011 and a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in March 2016.