Hugues Borsarello

« One undoubtedly has to think of Arthur Grumiaux while listening to Hugues Borsarello playing Mozart » (Diapason – Sept. 2015) : these words indeed reflect the exceptional instrumental talent of this brilliant and charismatic violinist. While ease, fluency, elegance, precision, subtlety of interpretation count among the musical qualities regularly associated to his name, his bright sound and airy playing achieve unanimity among musical critic as well as peers and public.

His contagious enthusiasm to share music and his ability to generate a real osmosis between soloist and orchestra owe to Hugues Borsarello a natural support from his partners.

The warm acclaim received by his record dedicated to Mozart violin concertos alongside La Follia - Orchestre de Chambre d’Alsace published in 2014 by Arties / Harmonia Mundi faithfully reflects this.

A regular guest as a soloist (Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne, Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux, Orchestre Symphonique d’Astana - Kazakhstan), his repertoire ranges from Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaïkovski, Sibelius concertos to virtuoso works by Saint-Saëns, Kreisler, Chausson, Sarazate, Paganini...

Born in a musician family, Hugues Borsarello early starts playing the violin with his father. During his studies at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, after advanced training with Patrice Fontanarosa, his taste for orchestra leads him to join the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, within which he performs under Claudio Abbado’s and Seiji Ozawa’s conducting... In parallel he co-founds a piano trio together with David Saudubray and Gautier Capucon to give free rein to their common passion for chamber music.

Having joined the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra at the age of 20 as a super soloist, Hugues Borsarello reinforces his orchestral itinerary over various milestones. Regularly invited as solo violin by numerous orchestras (Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne, Royal Opera House London...), from 2009 on he naturally takes up the post of solo violin and artistic director of La Follia - Orchestre de Chambre d’Alsace, as well as that of artistic counselor of the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux from 2016 on. 

Chamber music, to which he dedicates a large part of his concert agenda, brings him to perform at numerous festivals in France (Folle journée de Nantes, Festival du Périgord noir, Festival de Pâques de Deauville, ...) and abroad (Barbican in Londres, NCPA in Bombay, Kioi Hall in Tokyo...) alongside renowned artists such as François-René Duchâble, Gérard Caussé, Gautier Capuçon, Modigliani and Van Kuijk string quartets, Olivier Charlier, Denis Pascal, François Dumont, Philippe Bernold and Juliette Hurel. This curriculum as a chamber musician is completed through his extended string quartet experience as first violin within Leonis, Elysée and Volta string quartets, having co-founded the latter together with Laurent Manaud-Pallas, Arnaud Thorette and Gauthier Herrmann.

Besides his wide range of activities as an interpret, Hugues Borsarello also is passionate about sound sciences, more particularly acoustics:

In the electro-acoustical field, he conceives and develops high quality loudspeaker systems and associated electronics, as well as recording and studio equipment. He creates the « Audiosophie » company, which owns and produces the « Musique-Concrete » brand : its Grande Castine sound system received an award in 2011 at the High End Munich fair. 

In the field of lutherie, he completes in 2012 together with the musical acoustic laboratory of Pierre and Marie Curie University (Sorbonne University) an experience aiming to understand sound projection of ancient (Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu) and modern violins in sonata performance conditions, as well as concerto conditions (with orchestra).

Recently Hugues Borsarello entirely developed the audio and video system for RIFFX studio implementation at Seine Musicale concert hall, Boulogne-Billancourt.

Hugues Borsarello plays a violin by V. Ruggieri c.1695 and a bow by Léonard Tourte c.1790.

Hugues Borsarello is supported by Corelli-Savarez strings company.