The Project

The creation of the artists’ collective Les Dissonances by the violinist David Grimal in 2004 marked the beginning of an extraordinary adventure. The name “Les Dissonances” is both a homage to Mozart’s famous “Dissonance” String Quartet K465, and the marker of a constructive divergence from conventional thinking. The ensemble creates a link between musical actors, incorporating musicians from the most renowned French and international orchestras, renowned chamber players, and young talents at the start of their career, in a collaboration based on the search for excellence and sharing. The ensemble, which performs in varying configurations and without a conductor, has one primary objective: to offer audiences a new vision of works from the mainstream repertoire.

The musical trajectory of Les Dissonances has evolved steadily towards large-scale symphonic projects. After the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies between 2010 and 2015, whose recordings have received critical acclaim, the 2015-2016 season marked a new phase, with performances of Debussy’s La Mer, Shostakovich’s Symphony n^o 5, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony n^o 4.

In recent seasons, Les Dissonances has triumphed in major European venues by performing with more than eighty musicians on stage. As the only philharmonic orchestra in the world to interpret the mainstream repertoire in this way, Les Dissonances is always meeting new challenges as it dit, among others, with Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Mahler's first symphony and Chostakovitch's 11th symphony.

In December 2013, Les Dissonances launched its own label, Dissonances Records, which has released a Brahms set (the Violin Concerto and Symphony no.4) in 2014 which was voted best version in the French record critics’ programme ‘Tribune des critiques de disques’ on France Musique and a complete recording of the Mozart violin concertos in 2015. In 2016, Les Dissonances released a 10 years anniversary double edition exploring repertoires from 18th to 20th century (Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Bartok, Bernstein, Chostakovitch, Schnittke, Schoenberg) and a Shostakovich set (cello concerto and symphony #5) receiving the ffff de Télérama. 

A collaboration with Héliox Films enables the group to pursue a fruitful strategy of audiovisual recordings which are broadcast regularly on Mezzo and various other television channels around the world.

The collective’s laboratory is also teeming with projects for the future. New challenges for the orchestra will be launched and a series of chamber music concerts will be created in 2020. The Salon des Dissonances is built as a space for free expression and artistic meetings to explore the chamber music repertoire. Musicians of the collective will be free to express themselves through original programs and atypic formations.