Since his birth, Thibault Cauvin’s fingers have been refined, strengthened, positioned and at the age of five, they fit the strings of a guitar. Despite the ranges, the necessary rigor, he never divorced from it. The conservatory did not discourage him, he even left with honors at the age of 20. His first album, recorded live, marked the start of a career that is not about to stop.
Thursday, February 29, he has an appointment with the Victoires de la Musique Classique. He is nominated in the premier category, that of instrumental soloist for his disc entirely dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach. Thibault Cauvin is also currently on tour.
franceinfo: You who collect prizes and awards, what do the Victoires de la Musique Classique represent?
Thibault Cauvin: It’s very strong. It’s a huge symbol and it touches me a lot. Of course, when we think of classical music, we think of Johann Sebastian Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, but I believe that there is also classical music of today, written by composers who are inspired by other world music, Of actuality. This music of today, classical, I like a lot and sometimes it has less of a place in the great world of classical music. To see that today, through me, we give it a place, it touches me.
What does it mean to be a virtuoso in terms of the amount of work, you get up in the morning and you work every day?
Yes. Between the ages of 12 and 25, every minute of every day, it was the guitar. I played eight hours, nine hours, ten hours. It was a total madness which was exquisite to experience and which, later, around the age of 25, disturbed me a little because being too virtuoso, being too specialized in that world, is isolating. inevitably from the world.
“My father is a rocker and I really have this philosophy of wanting to play for everyone and to welcome all the dreamers, all the curious everywhere in the world.”
Thibault Cauvinat franceinfo
The path that I have been following for around fifteen years now is also to sometimes forget the guitar and for it to become an instrument again, namely a tool, a bridge which allows me to go beyond and to offer this chance to be able to invite those who listen to me to explore the worlds that I offer them.
I would like you to tell me about your beginnings. You are five years old, there is this guitar sound which inhabits you permanently and which very quickly makes you want to play it.
Yes. Very quickly, I wanted to play it and very quickly also, the desire to play for people. When I was very young, at seven, eight, ten years old, I ended up giving concerts almost every week. So these weren’t concerts like at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, of course, it was simply for my grandmother, for my uncle, my aunt, for friends who came to dinner. And today, as I have the chance to play in the most beautiful theaters in the world, I always have this feeling that in fact, I am playing for my grandmother and that the people who are there are people I love, even if I don’t know them, and even if it could be at the end of the world.
What is your relationship to loneliness? Because it’s a soloist’s career.
I love her so much. And choosing these moments of solitude, of contemplating life, is really very precious and very enriching. I lived like this traveling for many exquisite years, alone. I met people. I arrived at an airport, they welcomed me, they showed me the cities, they invited me to beautiful restaurants and then I left. It was little lives that came together and over time, I was alone and I really developed that for a long time on stage.
“I play alone to be even more with the people who listen to me. And that solitude pleases me deeply.”
Thibault Cauvinat franceinfo
Your disc contains the famous Toccata and fugue in D minor BWV 565the integral of La Chaconne and preludes transcribed by your brother, the composer Jordan Cauvin. So is it a family affair?
Totally. Initiated by my father for music and by my mother for the poetry of life and a certain way of contemplating the world. And then, with my brother, we are completely in communion. Together, we have a complementarity that is delicious and it’s also a way of working. I tell him dreams of composition, ideas that I may have had. He understands them, even if my ideas are often completely crazy. And then we exchange, we refine and we arrive at small works that I sometimes dream of being big and which then shine.
Scarlatti, Albéniz, Vivaldithere was also Cities 1 And Cities 2 with guest artists like Matthieu Chédid, Didier Lockwood and Thylacine. Collaborating, merging styles, allows you to open up more?
Absolutely. What I like now, of course, is playing with classical musicians, we speak the same language, there is something very pleasant about it, but also playing with other musicians like Thylacine who just makes me feel pleasure of reworking the score Asturias by Albéniz for the Victoires de la Musique. I’m not supposed to say it, but I say it willingly, my next record will be a duet with M. Two guitars, mine classical, his electric and there, again, we don’t speak the same language, but we create a world that is colored by both of our worlds and is completely intimate.
Thibault Cauvin will be in concert, notably, on March 8, 2024 in Thiers, on April 30 in Neuilly-sur-Seine or on May 20 in Digne-les-Bains and in February 2025, he will give three exceptional concerts on the occasion of his 40th birthday.