A principal clarinet of the Orchestre National de l’Opéra de Paris for 40 years, Philippe Cuper is a regular guest with leading international orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Milan La Scala, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Ensembles Contemporains à Paris, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and the London Philharmonia.
He has performed under the baton of masters such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Georges Prêtre, Christoph von Dohnányi, Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, James Conlon, Myung-Whun Chung, Armin Jordan, Gustavo Dudamel, and Riccardo Chailly. Born in Lille, he is a laureate of international competitions in Munich, Prague, Viotti, the Slovak Prize, the Geneva Medal, Orvieto, and the Mravinsky Medal in St. Petersburg.
He studied musicology at the Sorbonne and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM) in Paris, where he was awarded first prize for clarinet unanimously with top honors. His teachers included Gilbert Voisin (a disciple of Louis Cahuzac), Guy Dangain, Guy Deplus, and Henri Druart. He also received guidance from Jacques Lancelot, André Boutard, Stanley Drucker (of the New York Philharmonic), and in chamber music – Jean Hubeau and Pierre and Nelly Pasquier.
Having served as solo clarinet with the Orchestre Mondial des Jeunesses Musicales, he became principal clarinet of the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris at the age of 20. He has collaborated with renowned composers such as Olivier Messiaen (for his Quartet for the End of Time), Jean Françaix (recording his concerto under the composer’s direction), Henri Sauguet, Marcel Mihalovici, Manuel Rosenthal, Luciano Berio, Edison Denisov, Endre Komives, Philippe Hersant, Jean-François Zygel, Nicolas Bacri, Guillaume Connesson, Anthony Girard, and Kryštof Maratka.
He has premiered concertos by Nicolas Bacri, Yevhen Stankovych, and Jan Gronych (alongside Giora Feidman and Eddie Daniels in Tel Aviv), as well as quintets by Paquito D’Rivera in Boston.
He has taught at the Conservatorio Superior de Aragón in Spain and the Conservatoire National de Région de Versailles, and he regularly gives master classes at universities in Chicago, Cleveland, Mexico City, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Canberra, Jerusalem, and Moscow. He also teaches at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and the Schola Cantorum.
With around forty compact discs to his credit – honored with awards such as the Choc from Le Monde de la Musique and a nomination for the Victoires de la Musique – he frequently performs with numerous string quartets, including the Talich, Kocian, Takács, Enescu, Parisi, and Benaim quartets, the Trio Wanderer, pianists Paul Badura-Skoda, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Myung-Whun Chung, Laurent Cabasso, and Frank Chaplin, and violinists Ruggiero Ricci, Alexander Brussilovsky, Olivier Charlier, and Laurent Korcia. He is also the founder of the Paris Wind Octet (Octuor à vent de Paris), established in 1986.
