Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud have been playing cello and piano together for three decades, but Friday marks the first time San Diego audiences get to hear it in person. The duo performs at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 at Baker-Baum Concert Hall in La Jolla, and the event is listed at 7600 Fay Ave., with the show running until about 9:30 p.m.
The concert is presented by La Jolla Music Society, which lists the program as spanning Renaissance influences to modernism, including works by Brahms, Schubert, Britten, Fauré and Debussy. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Oct. 30 program's first half is built around Poulenc's Suite Française followed by Brahms's Cello Sonata in E Minor.
A separate listing for the concert from theconrad.org frames the pairing as a milestone moment, describing Queyras and Tharaud as two of France's most beloved musicians marking three decades together, with that venue's version of the program closing its first half with Brahms's Cello Sonata in E Minor, Op. 38, before moving through Schubert, Britten, Fauré, Debussy and more. The Philharmonie de Paris, which hosted the pair earlier this year, describes their collaboration as spanning more than two decades.
Two Musicians, One Shared Instinct
Queyras is described as a French-Canadian cellist in the Union-Tribune's report. Tharaud, meanwhile, is identified by the same report as a French pianist, and the San Diego Reader lists the pairing simply as Jean-Guihen Queyras on cello and Alexandre Tharaud on piano.
Queyras and Tharaud have performed together for three decades and have recorded as a duo.
A Career Shaped By Contemporary Music
Queyras has recorded more than 50 albums, per that same report, and holds a professorship at the University of Music Freiburg, where his official biography also credits him as artistic director of the Rencontres Musicales de Haute-Provence festival in Forcalquier. That same biography notes he and Tharaud are slated to premiere a new double concerto by Oscar Strasnoy during the 2025/26 season.
Queyras announced in 2025 that all proceeds from his U.S. solo tour that year would go to Ukrainian organizations, according to the Union-Tribune.
What To Expect Friday Night
Friday's concert will be the duo's first appearance in San Diego, bringing together chamber works alongside the Romantic and modern repertoire that has defined much of the pair's recorded output. Throughout, Queyras and Tharaud are known for performing transcribed works originally written for other instruments, arranged for piano and cello, a hallmark of a partnership that has stayed remarkably steady across three decades of shared stages.
