Charles Frelon

As a cellist, Charles Frelon first studied in France with Ernst Münch, Jean-Charles Regin and Markus Jenny, former assistant to André Navarra. He later continued his training with Taisuke Yamashita at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, and attended masterclasses with Marcio Carneiro, François Guye and Johannes Goritzki.

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Alongside his work as a performer, Charles Frelon developed his own compositional and literary practice at an early stage. His first composition, a piano sonata, was performed in 2012 at the Festival Classique de la Madeleine in Geneva, Switzerland. Later works included a symphony based on Goethe’s “Werther”, presented at the Angers Opera House in France, and a piano quartet performed several times in France and Switzerland.

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Between 2016 and 2018, he directed a theatre school in Geneva and wrote several plays that were performed there. A theatre piece dedicated to Beethoven, written in 2015, continues to be performed, most recently in Geneva (2023) and Portugal (2025). In 2017, he also developed a production combining music and text around Charles Baudelaire.

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His artistic work moves between classical chamber music, literature, theatre and a contemporary tonal musical language. At its centre is an accessible and expressive aesthetic that combines tonality, modality and personal dramaturgy.

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In 2024, Charles Frelon set to music and performed poems by the young Jewish poet Selma Merbaum as part of a ceremonial event in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, supported by Kulturland Brandenburg.

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In 2023, he founded the Kammermusiksalon Berlin, a concert series dedicated to chamber music in Berlin and Brandenburg. Its aim is to make classical music tangible in personal concert formats — through public salon concerts as well as private concerts, house concerts and tailor-made programmes for special occasions, cultural venues, foundations and private hosts.

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Since 2023, Charles Frelon has also been Director of the Ecole de Musique – Deutsch-Französische Musischule, an institution that has existed for 45 years and teaches around 420 pupils at several locations in Berlin.

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Charles Frelon plays a cello built in 2016 in Lyon, France, jointly by Damien Gest and David Léonard Wiedmer.