Lise Berthaud

Violist Lise Berthaud has grown from a stint as a BBC New Generation Artist into high status and vigorous activity as a chamber musician and recording artist. She is also a soloist who has recorded Berlioz's viola-and-orchestra work Harold in Italy. In addition to traditional repertory, Berthaud has performed various contemporary works. Her recordings include a complete cycle of Brahms' chamber music and, from 2025, the album Mozart, Bruch, with clarinetist Patrick Messina and pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta. Berthaud was born in Bourg-en-Bresse, in the French mountains northeast of Lyon, in 1982. She grew up in Sainte-Euphémie as the child of a school principal father and a teacher mother. Berthaud's first instrument was the violin, which she took up at age five and on which she quickly progressed to lessons at a music school in nearby Villefranche-sur-Saône. At 12, she switched to the viola and enrolled in lessons at the Lycée du Val de Saone in Trevoux. Berthaud attended the Conservatoire de Paris, where her teachers included Pierre-Henry Xuereb and Gérard Caussé. She won various French prizes for young musicians. In 2000, she won a prize in the European Young Instrumentalists Competition, and she scored a breakthrough in 2005 at the Geneva International Competition, where she won the Hindemith Prize. Another milestone came the following year when conductor Seiji Ozawa invited her to perform in his string quartet in Switzerland. Berthaud's recording debut came in 2012 on the Alpha label, on the album Gabriel Fauré 2: Quatuors avec Piano: Op. 15 & 45. Berthaud has participated in various chamber music groups, including the Skride Piano Quartet with pianist Lauma Skride, violinist Baiba Skride, and pianist Harriet Krijgh. A notable feature of her recording career in the 2010s was her part in the five-volume series Brahms: Intégrale Musique de Chambre, with violinists Pierre Fouchenneret, cellist François Salque, and pianist Eric Le Sage. Those albums were on the B Records label; Berthaud has also recorded for Capriccio, Alpha, Naxos, and Aparte, where she joined clarinetist Patrick Messina and pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta for an album of works by Mozart and Bruch. ~ James Manheim, Rovi