Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony, into a family where literature played an essential role. His father, a bookseller and publisher, instilled in him a love of books, poetry, and romantic imagination at an early age. This dual passion for words and sounds would profoundly influence his entire life and work. A dreamy and sensitive young man, Schumann hesitated for a long time between a literary and musical career before devoting himself fully to music.

Settling in Leipzig, he studied piano with Friedrich Wieck, hoping to become a virtuoso. His relentless work at the keyboard caused partial paralysis in one finger, putting an end to this project and pushing him towards composition. Schumann then revealed himself to be one of the most original minds of Romanticism. He wrote piano works of great poetic intensity (Carnaval, Scènes d'enfants), combining dream, irony, and introspection. A committed music critic, he founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in which he championed young talent and new art, notably that of Chopin and Brahms.

Love played a central role in his life. After a long struggle against the opposition of Clara Wieck's father, a piano prodigy, Schumann married her in 1840. This union inspired a blossoming of lieder of profound depth, in which music and poetry were combined with extreme sensitivity. However, Schumann's equilibrium remained fragile. Tormented by increasing mental illness, he experienced periods of intense creativity alternating with dark crises.

His final years were marked by suffering and silence. Committed to an asylum near Bonn, he died in 1856 at the age of forty-six. Robert Schumann left behind a profoundly human body of work, in which music becomes a confession of the soul. A poet of sound, he gave musical Romanticism an inner voice, intimate and deeply moving, reflecting the dreams, anxieties, and impulses of the human heart.

Along his university studies (DEA in musicology, University of Paris IV-Sorbonne), Frédéric Cellier was awarded three first prizes and a development prize at the CNR of Nice and won first prize at the International Competition of Musical Execution - soloist category – of Stresa (Italy).

He is the laureate of the Fondation de France and the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation and accredited teacher at the CNR of Nice, the CNR of Marseille, and at the CRR Olivier Messiaen of Avignon (France).

Frédéric Cellier is the interpreter of Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for clarinet Bb and piano with Jean-Michel Damase, Jean Françaix or Gabriel Tacchino, as well as his own arrangements for clarinet and harp of Erik Satie's Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes with the great French harpist Elizabeth Fontan-Binoche, and for clarinet, piano, and string orchestra of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in blue for Wynton Marsalis or under the baton of Adrian Gershwin, grandson of the composer.

Founder and artistic director of STRADIVARIUS Editions, he is the author of light music pieces played around the world and a considerable number of arrangements of all styles and for all instruments, acclaimed by many personalities in the music world, including Michèle Auric, Jean Françaix, Adrian Gershwin, Wynton Marsalis, Yehudi Menuhin, Madeleine Milhaud, Manuel Rosenthal, Gabriel Tacchino, and Ornella Volta.

"Frédéric Cellier has produced a number of adaptations of Georges Auric's works with such talent and precision that I consider them a natural addition to his chamber music catalogue."
Michèle AURIC - Georges Auric's widow

"To Frédéric Cellier, excellent musician and tireless arranger."
Jean FRANÇAIX - Composer and pianist

"Arranging a musical work is always a delicate and risky exercise, because it requires both modifying it so that it can be played by the desired instruments and preserving its very essence. But that is exactly what Frédéric Cellier has done, preserving the nuances, subtleties and soul of the original works while breathing new life into them.
His arrangements give all the musicians the chance to perform these compositions specially revisited for their instrument, and make music lovers rediscover them in a new light."
Adrian GERSHWIN - George Gershwin’s grandson

"Congratulations for your beautiful new orchestration and rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in blue."
Wynton MARSALIS - Trumpet player, composer, bandleader, general and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York

"It is outstanding that Frédéric Cellier has managed to transpose Saxophone Marmalade from the saxophone to the clarinet. I thank him for it and wish its great and deserved success. "
Manuel ROSENTHAL - Conductor, composer and Maurice Ravel’s pupil

"I am very happy to tell you how much I appreciated your transcription of the Capriccio, based on Francis Poulenc's Le Bal Masqué. It perfectly reflects the spirit and verve of the score for two pianos that I had the opportunity to play and record with Jacques Février, and it was a great pleasure for me to premiere it in Montpellier."
Gabriel TACCHINO - Pianist, Francis Poulenc’s specialist

"I must tell you that I really like your transcriptions and that I think the tone of the instruments you have chosen suits perfectly our beloved composer."
Ornella VOLTA - Musicologist, president of the Erik Satie’s Foundation