Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1958 and died in Paris in 2023, Ricardo Rapoport joined modern bassoon playing to historical performance practice, contemporary music and Brazilian musical traditions. In his home city he studied bassoon with Noël Devos and also engaged with guitar, viola da gamba, composition and conducting before becoming a member of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. In 1984 he moved to Paris, took a premier prix with Maurice Allard at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique and deepened his chamber music training with Maurice Bourgue. A French state scholarship then took him to the Banff Centre in Canada, where he turned to the baroque bassoon. He performed with ensembles such as Les Musiciens du Louvre, La Petite Bande and Le Concert Spirituel and taught bassoon, baroque bassoon and chamber music at the conservatory in Rennes. Besides taking part in contemporary premieres, the first complete recording of Antoine Dard’s six bassoon sonatas, made with Pascal Dubreuil, documents his engagement with rarely played repertoire.
Ricardo Rapoport
Bassoonist
