Festival / A major event for sacred and symphonic music, the Festival de La Chaise-Dieu highlights this year composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti or César Franck, and important works by Ravel, Poulenc, Charpentier, Brahms or Gershwin…
After two blank years due to the Covid, the Festival of the Chaise-Dieu intones a 56e edition, which will take place in this small town of Haute-Loire, but also outside the walls. The festival originally founded its identity on the exploration of the sacred music repertoire, then extended it to piano and symphonic music, inviting major French and international instrumental and orchestral ensembles. This edition will also be marked by the appointment, last February, of a very young director, Boris Bianco A 29-year-old trained violinist, who will add to the DNA of La Chaise-Dieu a very special attention to young creation…
Among a profuse and high-quality programme, we would first like to draw attention to a few rarely performed works and a few singular composers. The Contemporary Orchestral Ensemble of Auvergne will perform Melodie (1971) by Gyorgy Ligeti and, above all, heartbreaking Concerto in memory of an angel for violin and orchestra Alban Berg (1885-1935). Composed the year of the Viennese composer’s sudden death, this work reveals the expressive and emotional possibilities of the so serious and dreaded twelve-tone music, citing popular music and a chorale by Bach.
We also note the presence of works by two great American composers: Aaron Copland (1900-1990) with his Marching band for the common manand the least known Charles Ives (1874-1954) with The Unanswered Question for orchestra. This short piece dating from 1908 has been quoted many times in the cinema, in The Red line Terrence Malick in particular. Finally, among contemporaries, Thomas Lacote will present a world premiere, Nothing but your name for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, and Michael Levinas will play the piano (accompanied by a singer and a harpist) Espenbaum: eight lieder on poems by Paul Celan.
The highlights of the festival
Beyond our subjective “cabinet of curiosities”, the festival will offer several highlights. In the field of sacred music, the ensemble Les Surprises will play the Te Deum by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and the Aedes ensemble with the instrumentalists Les Siècles will launch into the great lyrical fresco of the Stabat Mater by Francis Poulenc, dating from 1950. The great figure of Italian Baroque music, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) will be honored with three concerts devoted to him. Another composer particularly highlighted this year: the Belgian Caesar Frank (1822-1890), for the 200e anniversary of his birth in Liège. Several concerts will explore certain facets of his work, both spiritual and sensual: the National Orchestra of Belgium will play his famous Symphony in D minor and symphonic poems, the Orchester des Pays de Savoie will play Prelude, Fugue and Variation …
Another highlight: the Berliner Symphoniker will perform the Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, the Symphony noh1 of Brahms and the Concerto for the left hand by Maurice Ravel. A concerto in one movement composed between 1929 and 1931, whose particularity is a piano score written for the left hand alone, in this case for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the philosopher Ludwig) who had lost his right arm during the First World War.
Finally, the music-loving actor Lambert Wilson will recite (at the Puy-en-Velay theatre), in the company of the pianist Roger Muraro, the Poetic and religious harmoniesby Franz Liszt, inserting poems by Lamartine, Hugo, Verlaine…
La Chaise-Dieu Festival
At La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire) from August 18 to 28