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The French clarinetist Raphaël Sévère was a prodigy, making appearances worldwide as early as age 11. He enrolled at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris when he was 14, remaining in the school's program until 2013, when he was awarded a master's degree. After winning major prizes as a teen, he went on to an impressive adult career.
Sévère was born in Rennes, France, on September 15, 1994. His entire family was musical, and as a child he studied piano, cello, and violin. Sévère added the clarinet at eight, studying at the Nantes Conservatory. He continued his piano studies, but nevertheless, he made such rapid progress on the clarinet that at 11 he could perform in China with the Macao Youth Symphony Orchestra in a concert marking Mozart's 250th birthday. The following year, he took home prizes from five international competitions, including that of the Tokyo Clarinet Society, where he won five separate prizes including the first prize. In 2010, Sévère received the Instrumental Solo Revelation prize at the Victoires de la Musique competition in France; he was the youngest person ever to receive the award. Sévère's career choice was set in 2013 when he entered the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, making a triumphant sweep of the top prize and eight special prizes. That year, he played the world premiere of a work by Poulenc, a set of incidental music for the Jean Anouilh play Le voyageur sans bagage.
Since then, Sévère has performed with major orchestras both in France and elsewhere, including the London Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Sévère's chamber music partners are an impressive group including Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, and Boris Berezovsky; and he has performed on an ongoing basis with a piano trio including pianist Adam Laloum and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière. That group won a Diapason d'Or award in 2015 for their recording of Brahms piano trios. Sévère's appearances in 2019 included a chamber concert at the prestigious Salle Cortot in Paris.
© James Manheim /TiVo