Olivier Charlier
Olivier Charlier
Olivier Charlier is a modest man who has never courted the media but has made a name for himself as one of the finest violinists of his generation. He showed a precocious talent, graduating with a Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM) at the age of fourteen, then reaping prizes at international competitions, including Munich, Montreal, Helsinki (Sibelius), Paris (Jacques Thibaud), Indianapolis, and New York (Young Concert Artists). Great artists such as Nadia Boulanger, Yehudi Menuhin and Henryk Szeryng spontaneously took the brilliant young musician under their wing.
Olivier Charlier is a fine representative of the French school of violin playing (that of Jacques Thibaud, Ginette Neveu, Christian Ferras) on stages all over the world. He has given concerts with about fifty different French orchestras, including all those of Paris (Orchestre National, Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonique de Radio France, Opéra, Ensemble Orchestral, etc.), and all the regional orchestras (Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lille, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Cannes, Nice, etc).
He also appears regularly with major international orchestras: London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé, CBSO, Berlin Symphony, Hamburg and Saarbrücken Radio Orchestras, Württemberg Chamber Orchestra, Bayerische Rundfunk, Tonhalle Zurich, Netherlands Philharmonic, the orchestras of The Hague, Monte-Carlo, Prague, Zagreb, New York, Montreal, Quebec, Mexico, Tokyo, Sydney, and so on.
Olivier Charlier’s active recording career reflects his eclecticism ; it includes (for Chandos) the violin concertos by Dutilleux (‘L’arbre des songes’), Lalo (Russian Concerto and Concerto in F), Edward Gregson, Gerard Schurmann (all of them with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Roberto Gerhard Concerto (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra); (for Erato) the Mendelssohn Concertos with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic and Lawrence Foster; (for EMI France) Saint-Saëns with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and Jean-Jacques Kantorow.
He has also recorded many French sonatas, with Jean Hubeau (Franck, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Pierné, Vierne) for Erato, and with Brigitte Engerer (Schumann, Grieg, Beethoven) for Harmonia Mundi. Olivier Charlier teaches at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), where he succeeded Pierre Doukan (who taught him) in 1992. He is regularly among the judges at international competitions, including Munich, Hanover, Indianapolis, Jacques Thibaud, Sibelius, etc.
