Mr. Jean Claude Guibal, deputy mayor of Menton, during the presentation of the music festival, expressed his serenity approaching this major summer season event.
The 66th edition will take place from July 31 to August 13, 2015. This festival, born in 1949, has undergone many changes and, for the past three years under the direction of Paul Emmanuel Thomas, it has maintained a balance between the old and the modern, which contributes to its success and reputation.
The venues, with their magic, beauty, the sea, the mountains, the sky, and the Saint Michael Basilica, are the setting for this event, its decor, and certainly a part of its success. After the praise from the deputy mayor, the artistic director unveils the program, page by page, making us salivate more and more.
The theme of this 66th edition is the violin. Violin in all its strings!
The festival-goers will discover artists performing for the first time in Menton. There is elegance, romance, voices of gold, voices that can shatter crystal. The latter evoke the Baroque and the Castrati. Chamber music requires perfect harmony between musicians. It requires time and complicity to achieve this. The audience will have an illustration of this on August 1st with a trio: violin, cello, piano. In the middle of the festival, a bit of a break, a departure from tempos: magic and the harp unite to delight, amaze, and perhaps rekindle the enchanted gaze of childhood.
Voices return with Rimsky Korsakov, Rachmaninov, and Rossini where we will hear excerpts from Semiramide, connoisseurs will appreciate. The piano will pay tribute to Chopin with Nikolai Lugansky. The Cocteau museum is the second setting of the festival, and we will witness a world premiere with the inauguration of a Bösendorfer piano of which only 12 exist in the world. The choice of location is explained by the reproduction of Orpheus on this instrument from the ‘artists’ series. It will also serve as the closing concert for the Cocteau museum with mezzo-soprano Janina Baechle and pianist Anne le Bozec, featuring works by Brahms, Duparc, Strauss, and Poulenc.
The following day, Chopin’s two concertos will precede, on the forecourt of the Saint Michael Basilica, the closing curtain of this rich and varied 66th festival. On Sunday, August 9, the festival mass will have taken place.
Every festival today has its official program and its off part. Menton offers, throughout the city, free concerts where film music, gypsy, tangos, and others are offered to the public. Through a conference, André Peyrègne will have told us everything about the violin. Violin in the city, from the windows, is how the festival supposedly began in 1949, with violins on the roofs, in the street, and in the gardens. Menton, as they say, is a garden and the festival is here to prove it to us.
Thierry Jan
