Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 27 in G Major (K. 379/373a)
Robert Schumann: The Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44
Quatuor Psophos
Ismaël Margain: Piano
After a relatively short but eventful trip that included an extra-long train ride, a couple of enjoyable days in Turin, a long but eventless bus ride, and an art- and gastronomy-filled stay in Aix-en-Provence, my temporarily ailing friend Vittorio, my mom and I finally arrived in Dieulefit, where summer invariably brings a lot of exciting activities. And I am not talking about helping her drastically downsize from her big and unbelievably cluttered house to the well-located, cool little apartment she had finally landed.
One of those most beloved traditions is no doubt the Festival Mozart (formerly known as Saoû Chante Mozart) festival, which has been filling up the miniature village of Saoû as well as its surrounding communities with classical music concerts performed by very promising as well as well-established musicians for the past 34 years and counting. Undaunted by its ever-increasing success, it has only been getting bigger and better while resolutely keeping its local spirit.
And that’s how last Sunday evening, after a busy morning spent catching up with a couple of friends at Dieulefit’s election poll site and checking out a nearby café under new management, the three of us found ourselves in the beautiful cloister of nearby Bonlieu-sur-Roubion’s Basilique Sainte-Anne, a brand new festival location, for a chamber music concert featuring Schubert, Mozart and Schumann performed by young but already highly praised Quatuor Psophos, whose ambitious Greek name evokes no less than the essence of sound, and pianist Ismaël Margain.
After facing the big surprise of a closed street and no alternative in sight while on the road, and the even bigger surprise of the elections results while waiting for the concert to start in the truly enchanting venue, we readily focused our attention on enjoying the perfect summer evening, starting with Schubert’s 10-minute Quartettsatz. Nobody knows why the composer left that planned string quartet unfinished, but the impeccably self-contained, Beethoven-flavored Allegro assai can easily stand on its own, as it was categorically proven to us on Sunday evening, never mind the strident alarm of a smartphone followed by a dreadful coughing fit behind me just as the party was getting going.
Although it has diversified its offerings over the years, the Festival Mozart festival thankfully still includes plenty of works from Mozart’s extraordinary œuvre. Our piece du jour was the lovely Violin Sonata No. 27, which was expertly handled by the Quatuor Psophos’ violinist Mathilde Borsarello Herrmann and pianist Ismaël Margain, as well as an unseen but definitely heard unidentified bird. The two musicians had a wonderful chemistry, but the uninvited feathered guest did not manage to fit in and quickly gave up. Nice try though.
The ads for the program highlighted Schumann’s “sublime” Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, and one could hardly object to the description, especially as we were happily basking in it. One of Schumann’s boldest and finest large-scale chamber works, it was dedicated to his brilliant pianist wife, Clara Schumann,who handled the first public performance, the first private performance having been handled a month earlier by Mendelssohn, who had stepped in when she had fallen ill. With friends like that… Predictably, it quickly turned into the landmark of the genre that it still is today.
Even though at 9:00 PM the church bells decided to let us know in no uncertain terms that it was, well, 9:00 PM during the second and, according to me at least, most sublime movement (Who knew that a church bell tolling nine times would take that long?), the five musicians soldiered on undeterred, graciously acknowledging the predictable applause at the end of the third movement, before triumphantly making it through the fourth and final one.
In fact, the Schumann quintet was such a resounding success that they obligingly played two excerpts of it as encores. Because one can never have too much of a good thing.
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