Edgar Moreau

Cellist Edgar Moreau launched concerto appearances alongside elite orchestras during his teenage years and unveiled his first solo recital recording at 20. Nicknamed “Le Petit Prince” of the cello, he had already collected distinguished prizes at an unusually early stage, among them second place in the Tchaikovsky competition at 17. He built a thriving mature career that placed him among the core roster of France’s Erato label, which issued his album Rococo in 2024.

Born April 3, 1994, in Paris, Moreau began cello lessons at four after observing a girl’s instruction inside an antique shop. He also trained on piano and captured a French conservatory prize on that instrument in 2010, yet the pull of the cello proved decisive. By age 11 he was performing with leading youth ensembles, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra in Venezuela among them. At 13 he entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, studying cello with Philippe Muller and chamber music with Claire Désert. National attention arrived in 2009 when, at 15, he won the Young Soloist Prize at the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris.

Two years later the Tchaikovsky success confirmed the enthusiasm already expressed by writers who had witnessed his playing, including the Bachtrack editor who remarked on his “bags of stage presence, with a flexible face which can turn from smile to grimace and back in an instant but always shows deep involvement with the music” (as quoted by the Warner Classics website, accessed January 20, 2021). Signed to Erato in 2013, he was also named “Révélation” of the year at the Les Victoires de la Musique awards. His Erato debut Play (2014), recorded with pianist Pierre-Yves Hodique, gathered encores and other short works. The follow-up Giovincello explored little-known 18th-century Italian cello concertos with the period-instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, an uncommon project for a young soloist. In 2015 Moreau performed the Sarabande from Bach’s Suite No. 2 for solo cello, BWV 1008, at a concert commemorating the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris.

He joined leading French instrumentalists for a 2017 Erato survey of Debussy’s sonatas and chamber music, then reunited with pianist David Kadouch in 2018 for a program of late-19th- and early-20th-century French chamber works that reached beyond Poulenc and Franck to embrace Rita Strohl and Fernand de la Tombelle. In 2019 he recorded cello concertos by Jacques Offenbach and Friedrich Gulda with Les Forces Majeures on Erato; the following year he released the recital album A Family Affair, featuring his siblings Raphaëlle, Jérémie, and David Moreau. By the early 2020s Moreau had established a profile defined by robust execution, personal magnetism, and adventurous programming, with nearly annual releases. He collaborated with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and conductor Michael Sanderling on Transmission: Korngold, Bruch, Ravel in 2022, while a 2023 disc of cello concertos by Mieczysław Weinberg and Henri Dutilleux featured the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne. For the 2024 album Rococo he rejoined the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, performing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, and Chopin’s Cello Sonata, Op. 65.