The organist, pianist and composer Fernand de La Tombelle studied with Théodore Dubois and Alexandre Guilmant at the Paris Conservatoire. He was also close to Camille Saint-Saëns, who gave him precious guidance. Although he had no revolutionary pretensions, La Tombelle showed a resilient and fiercely independent character and he was in many ways an engaging and very interesting figure. He mixed with artists such as Grieg, Gounod, d’Indy and Massenet (to whom he was very close) – composers who have been treated more kindly by posterity. Fernand de La Tombelle left a considerable and very varied œuvre, which deserves to be reconsidered not only for its own merits, but also as an illustration of a form of social and artistic activity in France at the turning point between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
His music covers every genre: songs, chamber music, organ pieces, religious and secular choral compositions, orchestral works, piano solos and duets, operettas, etc. He was also a photographer; he drew and painted; he was a writer (theory, literature, and even works on astronomy or cuisine). He was a gifted artist with a remarkable culture, and he did much to promote musical education among the working classes, notably in his native Périgord, to which he retired after the Second World War, no doubt to get away from a society that he felt he no longer understood.
(Source: Palazzetto Bru-Zane)

Saturday 2nd February 2013, 8:00 pm, at Palazzetto Bru-Zane in Venice, and Sunday 3rd February, 4:30 pm, at Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza, the duo Nicolas Dautricourt, violin, and Dominique Plancade, piano, will perform live a violin sonata by Fernand de La Tombelle.