Over a hundred!
This is the number of young musicians who will be gathered this year, just over the last four days of the festival.
A finale almost entirely dedicated to the future of classical music, and which will therefore see one another on the stages of the Grand Théâtre de Provence, the Jeu de Paume and the conservatory, the young orchestral musicians of the prestigious Karajan-Akademie du Berlin Philharmonic, in small as in large formation… But also and above all the "old" of Génération @ Aix, who will return almost in full force, for three concerts, to blow out the candles of this tenth anniversary!
"A grand finale which will be a bath of youth"
, rejoices Renaud Capuçon.
He does not hesitate to see in the coming of the Karajan-Akademie - placed for the occasion under the baton of a familiar with the event, Lionel Bringuier - a nod to his own history.
Returns expected
“In 1995, I studied in Berlin… And we had all our friends at the Karajan Academy. There are no coincidences
,” he recalls.
Before admitting, with a smile:
“It doesn't make me any younger.
But see all the musicians of Génération @ Aix, either!
It's when I look at them that I realize that the festival is already ten years old.
Otherwise, it would feel like yesterday.
But, turning the pages of this event that we are constantly writing, it is clear that some of them have grown up.
It's always like that.
It's like family reunions: it's by seeing how much the younger generation has grown that we understand that time has passed.
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Among the returns expected from this tenth anniversary, that of the Moreau siblings.
“Edgar was only 16 and a half years old when he came to the festival, for the first edition
,” recalls Renaud Capuçon.
After having participated in the beginning of the Génération @ Aix concerts, he returned in 2015, this time surrounded by his family, for the big
Brothers and Sisters
concert organized by the festival at the Darius-Milhaud conservatory, around
Schubert's
Octet .
Then, in 2016, in a bold program dedicated to the Pierre Boulez galaxy.
2015. To celebrate the family, the Renaud and Gautier Capuçon brothers decide to gather around them, at the Darius-Milhaud conservatory, three other siblings: the La Marca, the Chilemme and the Moreau, for an Octet by Mendelssohn which will mark a milestone.
Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival_Caroline Doutre
The mission to transmit
The following year saw him give a master class to students barely older than him.
And, in 2021, after a blank year when he should have played at the end of the festival in Beethoven's
Triple
, he returned at short notice - after the last minute cancellation of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra - to symbolically interpret the trios de Beethoven, with Renaud Capuçon and François-Frédéric Guy, to open the all-digital edition, followed remotely by nearly 1.5 million viewers!
“It's a loyalty that touches us enormously and shows how much these young people are attached to this festival and its atmosphere
, believes Dominique Bluzet.
We would never have imagined, when we launched these Génération @ Aix concerts, ten years ago, that they would have allowed us to have so many great artists at the start of their careers.
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Artists who do not hesitate to invest themselves, today, in transmission.
“It is always a very strong moment to see these young people themselves become transmitters and in turn share the values that were ours ten years ago”
, continues Capuçon, who for his closing carte blanche did not hesitate to invite, exceptionally, this year, all the participants of Génération @ Aix since 2013. Among the thirty or so musicians who answered present will be many figures discovered during the Génération concerts and, since then, have become emblematic figures of the festival.
Like Edgar Moreau and his sister, Raphaëlle.
But also the violinist of Syrian origin Bilal Alnemr, a very young student at the Aix conservatory during the first edition of the festival, and who was offered at the end of it a violin specially made by luthier Pierre Barthel .
Before being invited to go on stage, alongside the artistic director and the pianist… Hélène Grimaud!
2013. To close its first edition, the festival invites the young Syrian violinist Bilal Alnemr, who has just received the “violin of the festival”, to go on stage in the company of Renaud Capuçon and Hélène Grimaud.
Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival_Caroline Doutre
Meet the big names
A first participation which he also remembers as if it were yesterday:
“I had no awareness of the notoriety of Hélène Grimaud and Renaud Capuçon.
It was probably better
, he concedes.
It was a very natural moment of exchange: in the evening I played with them, the next day I was in high school.
Having been able to meet, as equals, in the course of a conversation - musical or not -, the biggest names in classical music... This is what most of the young people who have taken part in the Génération concerts over the past ten years @ Aix.
“An incredible moment
,” recalls cellist Anastasia Kobekina.
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The one who will participate this year, in addition to the carte blanche which closes the festival, in the reunion of the cellists of Génération @ Aix organized on April 14 (before those devoted to the winds and the piano, the next day), is part of the promotion 2018 of the festival.
She remembers having rubbed shoulders there, for a few evenings,
“the immense pianist and conductor Andras Schiff, Gérard Caussé, François-Xavier Roth… So many artists whom I admire and whom I would never have thought of being able to rub shoulders with. so simple and intense at the same time”.
For her, to come back five years later, haloed by the success of her last album (
Ellipses,
at Mirare), is
“an honor.
Moreover, within the framework of a concert exclusively dedicated to the young generation of the cello”.
"I have the feeling that there is in France today a school as abundant as it is fascinating in its variety of characters and personalities"
, confides this former student of Jérôme Pernoo at the CNSM in Paris.
2019. Anchored in its century, the Easter Festival has always given an important place to women conductors, from Barbara Hannigan to Emmanuelle Haïm.
In 2019, the event decided to entrust the Mexican Alondra de la Parra, a new icon of management, with its big concert for the people of Aix.
Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival_Caroline Doutre
Karajan-Academie der Berliner Philharmoniker
, April 13 at 8:30 p.m.
Generation @ Aix: Les Violoncelles, April 14 at 6 p.m.
Generation @ Aix: Winds and piano
, April 15 at 12 p.m.
Soloists of the Karajan-Akademie, April 15 at 6 p.m.
Generation @ Aix closing concert, April 16 at 5 p.m.
