Biography

A child prodigy in her youth and a competition-winning virtuoso by her late teens, cellist Anne Gastinel has gone on to handsomely fulfill all the promise augured by such auspicious beginnings. She has appeared on French television, received countless awards, made over a dozen recordings, and given concerts at the major venues throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, often with the leading conductors and orchestras. In addition, despite her busy concert and recording schedules, Gastinel has served on the faculty of the Lyon Conservatory as professor of cello. Her repertory is broad, spanning Baroque and modern music, taking in solo, chamber, and concertante works by J.S. Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorák, Elgar, Bloch, Rachmaninov, and contemporary French composer Éric Tanguy. Gastinel has recorded exclusively for Naïve Records. Anne Gastinel was born in Tassin-la-Demi-Lune (near Lyon), France on October 14, 1971. She was extremely precocious, beginning studies on cello, piano, and oboe at four years of age! At 10 she appeared on French television as a cello soloist with an orchestra. The following year she enrolled for music studies at the Lyon Conservatory, where she would win first prize in cello performance in 1986. Gastinel had further studies at the Paris Conservatory, where her teachers included cello icons Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Tortelier, and Janos Starker. In 1988 Gastinel won first prize in the prestigious Scheveningen International Competition, and the following year she graduated from the Paris Conservatory, having by then given concerts in more than 50 European cities. By the early '90s both Gastinel's concert appearances and recordings were drawing notice: in 1994 the French classical organization Victoires de la Musique gave her Record of the Year and Soloist of the Year awards; she was given a Prix Fnac in both 1995 and 2000, and was recipient of a Prix de l'Academie du Disque, among other awards. In 1997 Gastinel was chosen by Marta Casals-Istomin to play for one year the famous Matteo Gofriller cello owned by Pablo Casals. In 2003-2005 Gastinel made a series of highly acclaimed recordings for Naïve of the five Beethoven and two Brahms sonatas for cello and piano, with French pianist François-Frederic Guy. In 2008 Gastinel was awarded a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by the French government. Among Gastinel's later recordings is her 2009 album of Spanish music, Ibérica, a collection of works by de Falla, Granados, and Cassadó featuring guitarist Pablo Marquez.