Piano lovers no longer need an introduction to the vast 14th-century barn, in the heart of the Touraine countryside. Accessed by passing under an impressive fortified gateway, it was here that Sviatoslav Richter fell under the spell of the place and decided, in 1963, to create a festival. The first concerts a year later took place on the bare ground of the old building, and La Grange de Meslay soon became an institution where the greatest artists – and especially the greatest pianists – could be seen every year.
For its 60th edition, the Festival (7th–16th June) and its director René Martin are pulling out all the stops to celebrate the big birthday. The opening weekend is faithful to the spirit of Richter, who sought to “present the musical elite” to the audience, as Martin explains. In the course of three recitals over three days, pianists Jonathan Biss, Dmitry Masleev and Masaya Kamei will give us an impressive panorama of international piano scene. Biss, a musician “possessed by the score” according to Alain Lompech, will be performing Schubert’s last two sonatas. Masleev, winner of the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition, will be giving a recital of music from his homeland, from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninov by way of Glinka, Balakirev and Mussorgsky. Kamei is a young talent for audiences to discover, whose highly virtuosic programme, including Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit and Balakirev’s Islamey, will certainly excite curiosity.
At the other end of the festivities, the closing Sunday will offer the whole cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos, transcribed for piano and string quintet by Vinzenz Lachner, played by a fine foursome of French pianists: Tanguy de Williencourt, Nathanaël Gouin, Jonas Vitaud and Jean-François Heisser. These four musketeers will conclude the festival together by presenting a playful creation of Heisser’s: a set of variations for eight hands giving overview of all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies!
This last day will take place not at La Grange de Meslay itself, but at the Nouvel Atrium de Saint-Avertin, across the Loire on the other side of Tours. That’s one of the characteristics of this 60th anniversary edition: the festival will be spreading well outside its usual territory, with most of the concerts happening outside the confines of La Grange. This diversity of venues will chime with the diversity of repertoire: the Baroque concert by cellist Hanna Salzenstein (a member of well-known ensemble Le Consort), for example, will take place under the beautiful timbers of the ancient Chapelle Saint-Libert in Tours, while the unusual experiments of cellist Paul Colomb, spanning electronic music and Indian sound worlds, will be at the Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré.
The following day, Colomb will be switching to his cello quintet (with Michèle Pierre, Frédéric Deville, Justine Metral and Louis Rodde) in another of Tours’ iconic places: the MAME arts and co-working centre, a former printworks and a jewel of 1950s architecture (it won the Grand Architecture Prize of Milan in 1954), falling into disrepair before being brought back to life in 2019. The day after, this unique site hosts a particularly creative show, designed and narrated by pianist Pascal Amoyel, which will explore Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas as well as the composer’s life and the mysteries of his artistry.
Still, while daring to create forms of spectacle a long way from the hay drying under the barn timbers of La Grange de Meslay in the 1960s, the festival has stayed faithful to its origins and to it's founder’s personality. It will keep faith with Richter's predilection for Chopin, whose two concertos will be played in one concert by Marie-Ange Nguci, accompanied by the Sinfonia Varsovia String Quintet. It will also keep faith with the Russian pianist’s passion for art song and chamber music, the former in a recital given by bass Alexander Roslavets and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov, the latter in a concert from Trio Wanderer, who will interpret two of Beethoven’s most famous piano trios.
Always attentive to the passing on of musical knowledge in general and of the piano in particular, Martin gives pride of place to masterclasses: Claire Désert, professor of piano and chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire, will be giving a day of public classes to schoolchildren in the region, at the Espace Malraux de Joué-lès-Tours, on the shore of the Lac des Bretonnières. Désert herself will then play a recital which will travelling from Beethoven to Bartók: a fine symbol of a festival which may be of venerable years but is always renewing itself, and turning to future generations.
Click here to see all the concerts in the 60th edition of the Festival.
This article was sponsored by the Festival de la Grange de Meslay.
