Thousands of music lovers and musicians meet each year around the abbey of Saint-Robert de la Chaise-Dieu. This majestic Gothic vessel is the strength of the event, with its acoustics, its beauty, its spirituality. The music always gains in brilliance and depth. Each concert in these places raises awareness of the sublime present of uniqueness. It is so, almost inexplicable.
The spark Gyorgy Cziffra
Cziffra concert at La Chaise-Dieu on September 7, 1969. La Montagne archives.
To cut a long story short… The origin of the building dates back to the 11th century, when Canon Robert de Turlande founded the first Casa Dei monastery here: The House of God.
In 1966, this place charged with spirituality, with astonishing acoustics, seduced Gyorgy Cziffra (1921-1994). This absolute legend of the piano – and of music in general – discovered the abbey church and its organ, then in ruins, during a private stay with Doctor Georges Mazoyer and his wife Suzanne.
On the proposal of the couple, he agrees to give a few concerts at La Chaise-Dieu and to donate the fees collected to the reconstruction of the organ. Accompanied by his son, György Cziffra (1942-1981), conductor, he gave several recitals and concerts from 1966.
A festival is thus built around the Hungarian virtuoso before taking off and becoming an event in the field of sacred music. And so it is with Cziffra, like many other artists who, in their careers, have to confront the building.
The Ebene Quartet to open the season of the Friends of Clermont-Ferrand Music
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Spatialship
For more than fifty years, therefore, the greatest musicians have all taken the direction of the plateau dominated by the abbey, sharing with their public the pleasure of the ears as well as the eyes, thanks to the quality of the furniture and the present ornaments that it contains: marble recumbent statue of Pope Clement VI, the famous Danse Macabre, the set of tapestries (now installed in a neighboring chapel), the organ case, the 144 stalls, the stone rood screen which separates the abbey in two .
Many chefs share the same feeling when they arrive in front of the abbey: “It’s a spaceship explains Raphaël Pichon, and you really wonder how we’re going to fill it”… “But we always know we’re going to do it beautiful music” concludes Françoise Lasserre.
Loyalty
“The tremendous link that we have between heritage and music is what fundamentally differentiates us from other festivals and what also brings us closer to other national and European events”, rightly declared the former director of the Julien Caron event.
This link is not reserved for the abbey church of La Chaise-Dieu alone, the successive thinkers of the festival using in the best possible way many other remarkable buildings in Haute-Loire (and even Puy-de -Dome and the Loire).
If this heritage has a tremendous power of attraction for musicians, the thinkers of the event have always known how to play another part: that of companionship: “Loyalty in this environment is providential, explained Jean-Claude Malgoire, himself. same big faithful of the festival. Thanks to her, we dare to do great things”.
New “big things” are expected this year, from August 18 to August 28, for the first edition led by Boris Blanco.
On the program from August 18 to 28. Boris Blanco defends the programming of his predecessor, Julien Caron, who left at the start of the year for other musical adventures. This 2022 edition sees the redeployment of the festival outside the walls, the return to the abbey of the great French and international symphonic ensembles: celebration of the anniversary of Schütz, Stabat Mater by Poulenc, creation of a work by Thomas Lacôte, bicentenary of the birth of César Franck…. All eras find their place in La Chaise-Dieu.
All programming on chair-god.com
Pierre-Olivier Febvret
Festival – The Saint-Robert abbey of La Chaise-Dieu, in Haute-Loire, a magical place for music