A black saloon car paves its way through the suburbs of Saint-Raphaёl on the Côte d’Azur. It is hot, the clothing of the passengers sticks to their bodies like flies to a carcass, the roundabouts – a French invention which have taken over Europe as Bonaparte once did – are never-ending. The Mercedes picks up speed, scattering pedestrians ungallantly off zebra-crossings, and then reaches the promenade. Five people in sunglasses jump out of the car, pull several boxes out of the boot, unite with two waiting colleagues at lightning speed and shoot off: irregular, rattling brass rhythms, staccato bursts of percussion, cascading clusters of woodwind notes, firmly articulated string sounds.

The gigolos and bikini-clad beauties on the over-filled beach breathe a sigh of relief: the imagined SAS attack is just a rehearsal. In the evening it gets serious, when Igor Stravinsky’s music theatre piece L’Histoire du soldat is performed in the open-air by actor Christopher Widauer and seven musicians of the “Musique Cordiale” Festival, directed by conductor, arranger and chorus-master Peter Davies. When Stravinsky wrote Histoire in 1918 he was forced by the First World War to restrict his performers to seven musicians and a narrator. At the “Musique Cordiale” Festival, however, the perfectly-rehearsed chamber ensembles create a special quality you could almost call its trademark.

There are also of course the larger-scale vocal and choral concerts, and the big finale of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St John Passion” (conductor: Tom Seligman) proves again this year that with the taut energy of professionally-trained amateur singers from England, France and Germany, they are tackling the works of the international choral repertoire head-on. But the real heart of this delightful festival is formed by those intimate events which draw the audience close up to the music: light chamber music with harp by Debussy and Ravel (with the fabulous harpist Tanya Houghton); the lunchtime concerts in wonderful, rarely opened chapels and churches; above all the opera evenings at the Place du Valat in Seillans, which do not shrink from the big pieces – this year Puccini’s La Bohème.

In seven years this lively festival, founded by the British music manager Pippa Pawlik in the hinterland of the Côte d’Azur, has steadily become an important institution in the summer music calendar of the beautiful French coast. Of course it is not the first and not the biggest music festival of the area. It dawned on French makers of culture decades ago that it was necessary to offer something to the visiting bathers if they weren’t to be as bored there as they were at home. But none of the established festivals exude the charm and human warmth that Pippa Pawlik achieves with her handful of loyal colleagues and an army of friends and supporters.

The headquarters of “Musique Cordiale” alone distinguish it pleasingly from the glamour of the coastal towns. Seillans, situated in the largely rural “Pays de Fayence”, is a hilltop village with narrow and breathtakingly steep streets, which repeatedly broaden out into romantic squares. Here you will certainly meet one of the mostly British musicians or singers, start up a conversation, then continue the discussion after the evening concert at one of the communal suppers, for which the chef, Andreas, conjures up individual creations from his own and local recipes in order to cater for the masses. Every year the whole locality and numerous landlords in the sun-soaked province are re-awakened by the festival’s director to the idea that music does not just make a profit (which might be minimal here): it also promotes understanding among people whose hearts are opened by wine and song, to put it a little dramatically.

So while this year the bathing resort Saint-Raphaёl is more of a tentative guest performance in the lion’s den, the other settings breathe the spirit of a wonderfully fragile past: the ancient, austere churches in Seillans, Bargemon, Bagnols-en-Forêt or in the tiny hamlet of Mons, high above the bare mountains of eastern Provence. And it is amazing how music of every era unfolds with a new intensity against a background of their rough walls and religious imagery; take for example the “Academy Concert” with young students from the Nice Conservatoire who, like last year, refine their orchestral experience with professionals such as the conductor Tom Seligman or the panpipes virtuoso Michel Tirabosco.

The main events of the festival every year are of course the two opera performances in the Place du Valat in Seillans – a square formed of houses and massive walls, which is almost enough of a stage set in itself. For the production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, however, the natural backdrop is transformed with brute force into a future which is not to be desired, but which is very much within the realms of possibility. Above the raging mistral, which blows the musicians’ scores from their music stands, alarm signals can be heard, and also the bleeping of detectors which check the bodies of the performers for infection, as this Bohème – according to the concept of director Andrew Staples – takes place after the outbreak of an epidemic which is more terrible than the radioactive contamination of the Fukushima area.

In this climate of fear of course the loving and celebrating is particularly intense and desperate; instead of the old-fashioned tuberculosis, Mimi (and later also Rodolfo) suffers from a nameless infection which will claim the lives of all on earth. So it’s an apocalyptic vision, in which the group of young singers moves with visible good humour – among them the highly talented Russian Ilona Domnich as Mimi. Steven Moore brings off the trick in this production by the London “Vignette Opera” of not only conducting the chamber orchestra with verve, but also – in a sort of intricate “choreography” – repeatedly fixing the flapping pages of his score, and calling out the required chords to the harpist. Perhaps another reason why Pippa Pawlik likes inviting English musicians – nothing really flusters them.

Article by Michael Struck-Schloen translated from German by Jo Spearing

3 – 13 August 2011

Named as one of the top ten European music festivals in 2010, Musique Cordiale is celebrating its seventh year with a programme more varied and exciting than ever.  This year the festival has a distinctly French flavour, held in Seillans, a small and exquisite French village in the hills behind the Mediterranean about an hour north west of Nice.

Stravinsky’s ‘L’Histoire du Soldat’ will be performed at the opening concert in the Place du Valat in Seillans, a lovely mediaeval village in the hills to the North West of Nice. We are delighted that Christopher Widauer will bring this remarkable version for his life size marionette to narrate this tale by the Swiss writer Ramuz in both English and French, with the ensemble conducted by Peter Davies making his debut at Musique Cordiale.

This year’s opera from Vignette Productions is Puccini’s ‘La Bohème, conducted by the young Australian Steven Moore also making his Musique Cordiale debut, and directed by the tenor Andrew Staples.  The orchestral opening concert will include a Bach double concerto, with Peter Liang and Sophie Rosa as soloists,  Mozart’s 4th Horn concerto with Timothy Brown,  Schoenberg’s ‘Nuit Transfiguré’ and Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings, conducted by Peter Davies. The choir will sing an ‘a cappella’ programme of French music, both sacred and profane.  To close the festival, conductor Tom Seligman will return to join forces with Andrew Staples singing the Evangelist and the arias in Bach’s St John Passion. Graham Ross, who has recently taken up his post as Music Director at Clare College Cambridge will return to Seillans  to play the continuo part in the St John Passion.  He will write another piece for choir and harp with Tanya Houghton as soloist.

As last year, we are inviting a few young musicians from the Nice Conservatoire and other academies of excellence to join in a concert of string music to play Vaughan Williams ‘Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis’, Vivaldi concerto for 4 violins and ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’ for soprano and strings by Handel. We now have 2 professors of music bringing their students to Seillans this year, which means we are able to perform Villa Loboz ‘Bacchanalia Brasileiras No 5’ with 8 cellos and soprano! Each student plays next to a professional player,  therefore giving them a wonderful opportunity to make music at a high level with different musicians.

There will be 2 Jazz concerts this year, one in each of the festival weeks.  Appearing in Seillans for the first time will be Remi Harris and his exciting young Gypsy Jazz Trio, playing to the feel and vibe of the Hot Club sound of the 40s. His influences are Django Reinardt, Bireli Lagrene, Wes Montgmery, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Peter Green….and he will be joined by Tristan Fry, no stranger to Musique Cordiale, and the pianist Jean-Marie Reboul.  In the second week, we welcome the celebrated Freddy Roux trio.

This year the participation of singers and instrumentalists and audience from around Europe has broadened yet again.  Lovers of music from over 10 countries will be coming together in this idyllic setting in Seillans, in the south of France.