“Barely finished are the major summer festivals (Cimiez, Menton), a new one is announced, ensuring the transition between the summer musical events and the new season: the “Violins of Legend” Festival of Beaulieu and Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat. You can hear great music, artists of high renown, but also stories about violins are told there.” These are the words of André Peyregne who introduces this festival to us.
The “Violins of Legend” Festival of Beaulieu-sur-Mer and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat will introduce you to violins (or cellos) with a history, that have traversed the centuries in the hands of famous individuals or soloists and that will come alive before you. At the beginning of each concert, André Peyrègne will tell you their story.
Created in 2008 by Michael Desjardins, concert pianist, and André Peyrègne, director of the Nice Conservatory and musicologist, the “Violins of Legend” Festival is aimed at all those interested in quality concerts but also in the history of musical instruments, those violins that have crossed centuries, from hand to hand, from continent to continent, through romantic stories.
How could one not be moved by hearing an instrument resonate that has been in illustrious hands, for which such great composer wrote, played in historical circumstances?
Such are the originality and charm of this festival.
The Festival aims to become the meeting place for major violin collectors from around the world, who could gather once a year, and showcase and compare their acquisitions.
In 2008, we heard violins that had been in the hands of Vivaldi or Mendelssohn, a cello that was played by Offenbach and by Rostropovich, the former violin of Henryk Szeryng, or the Stradivarius of Pierre Amoyal, whose theft by Italian criminals made headlines.
In 2009, we heard the violin on which Ysaÿe created Franck’s sonata or the “Quatuor des Evangélistes,” a masterpiece by the luthier Vuillaume. In 2010, we found Fritz Kreizler’s Guarnerius violin.
In 2011, Stradivarius violins will come to us from Cremona, in the hands of the Quartet of this city or Giuliano Carmignola.
But we will also hear a violin shrouded in mystery, the one that secretly played, backstage, Tchaikovsky’s concerto in the famous film with two million admissions, “The Concert.” It will be its true performer in the film, Sarah Nemtanu, who will hold it.
We’ll also open up to a violin of a different style, the electric violin of Didier Lockwood, which has traveled the world several times.
As for Natalia Gutmann’s cello, it is Natalia Gutmann’s cello, and the mere fact that it is in the hands of this great lady of the cello already confers a legendary status upon it!
Great emotions in perspective!
