The International Organ Festival of Monaco 2020 will take place this August, flowing into early September. There is Free entry at Monaco Cathedral with the Detailed program available on www.festivalorguemonaco.com Of course, the 2020 programming is tightened due to the current exceptional circumstances but it is a source of great artistic and musical encounters and very much worth exploring.
Here are the highlights of the program:
Mr. Ibrahim and the flowers of the Koran
Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin combines with her instrument the power of the organ and its softness, highlighting and especially in music, this reflection on friendship, the strength to live, tolerance. Pauline Choplin and Pierre-Marie Escourrou, actors, will narrate the powerful text by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
“One day, the gaze of Mr. Ibrahim, the wise old man who runs the Arab grocery store, meets that of eleven-year-old Momo, who is unloved, and, from conversation to conversation, life becomes smarter, ordinary things extraordinary.”
Concert In Memoriam Rolande Falcinelli
Inspired composer, international soloist, brilliant teacher, Rolande Falcinelli, whose birth centenary we are celebrating this year, was at the very least a singular artist.
Pascale Mélis, Yves Castagnet and Philippe Brandeis on the organ and Elise Battais on the transverse flute, who have all known her, offer a concert of her emblematic works to discover a language off the beaten track that delights like no other.
Cine-concert Metropolis by Fritz Lang, 1927
Metropolis is a futuristic megalopolis, organized according to a caste system. Mad scientist develops a female-looking android who will urge workers to rebel. Class struggle and metaphysics come together in an absolute masterpiece. Accompanied on the organ by one of today’s greatest improvisers: Jean-Baptiste Dupont.
Program
* Sunday August 23 at 4 p.m.:
Conference by Roland Galtier: “Studying, building, restoring organs, the role of the project manager”
* Sunday 23 August at 5 p.m.:
Organ and reciters
“Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Koran” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin, organ
Pierre-Marie Escourrou, narrator
Pauline Choplin, narrator
* Sunday 3O August at 4 p.m.:
Meet the artists
In memory Rolande Falcinelli
* Sunday 3O August at 5 p.m.:
Concert
In memory Rolande Falcinelli
Pascale Mélis, Yves Castagnet and Philippe Brandeis, organ Elise Battais, flute
* Sunday September 6 at 4 p.m.:
Conference Claude Passet “The organ in Monaco, 16th – 21st centuries”
* Sunday September 6 at 5 p.m.:
Cine-Concert
Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927
Jean-Baptiste Dupont, organ improvisation
Free entry, subject to availability Tel. : +377 98 98 83 03
