Claude Delangle
Claude Delangle taught saxophone at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) from September 1988 to June 2024. In the same year, he founded the European Saxophone University in Gap, where he has served as Artistic Director.
At the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he performed as a soloist and as a member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain from 1986 to 2000. A close collaborator of Luciano Berio, he gave the world premiere of Berio’s Saxophone Concerto, Chemin VII – Récit, and performed alongside him during the Norton Lectures at Harvard University, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Tisch Center in New York, the Cologne Philharmonie, and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London.
He has also collaborated with conductors and composers including Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, Peter Eötvös, Kent Nagano and Armin Jordan—with whom, at the age of 23, he recorded Claude Debussy’s Rhapsodie with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra for Erato—as well as Myung-Whun Chung, Lawrence Foster and Leonard Slatkin.
He has appeared as a soloist or ensemble member with leading orchestras and ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC orchestras in London and Wales, the Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Finnish Radio Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Kioi Hall Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra, Northern New York Symphony Orchestra, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Camerata Aberta in São Paulo, and the Novosibirsk Orchestra. An enthusiastic advocate of the French wind tradition, he has also performed with the French Republican Guard, the French Air Force Band, the French National Police Band and the United States Navy Band.
His stage projects—including Canticum (Roma Europa) with Luciano Berio and London Voices; Tango Futur (Aix-en-Provence) with Susanna Moncayo; Quest (Zagreb Biennale) with Thierry Coduys; Récit (Agora/IRCAM, Tokyo Spring Festival and Shizuoka AOI), featuring works by Pierre Boulez, Ichiro Nodaira and Marco Stroppa; Elucidation with choreographer Loïc Touzé; Japanese Love Songs (Manca/Nice) with mezzo-soprano Marie Kobayashi; and, most recently, Duo with dancer Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky (Bach, Debussy, Mantovani and Leroux)—have profoundly shaped his approach to sharing musical creation as a living, dynamic experience.
Claude Delangle has premiered some 150 works by composers including Berio, Amy, Denisov, Dufourt, Grisey, Jolas, Piazzolla, Stockhausen, Taïra, Campana, Dubedout, Durieux, Hosokawa, Hurel, Jarrell, Jodlovski, Lauba, Leroux, Lopez-Lopez, Louvier, Mantovani, Matalon, Naon, Natsuda, Nodaïra, Robin, Strasnoy, Tanada and Ton-That Tiêt, among others. Creating and transmitting music are at the heart of his artistic activity.
Claude Delangle has recorded fifteen albums for BIS and has contributed to monographic recordings of works by Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Luciano Berio, Edison Denisov, Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey and Philippe Leroux for Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Erato and Verany.
For four decades, he has performed with his wife, pianist Odile Catelin-Delangle, a professor at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.
Claude Delangle has been actively involved in the development of Henri Selmer Paris saxophones and directs a series of publications at Éditions Henry-Lemoine in Paris, where he has published numerous works by composer friends from several generations.
Claude Delangle was named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2017. In November 2022, the George Enescu University of Arts in Iași, Romania, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate.
He is also a priest at the Saint-Germain-et-Saint-Cloud parish in Louveciennes, within the French Deanery of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Western and Southern Europe.
