Printemps des Arts Festival in Monte-Carlo 2024

The Printemps des Arts Festival in Monte-Carlo will open on Wednesday, March 13, at the Église Saint-Charles in Monte-Carlo with Ockeghem’s Medieval Requiem (ca. 1410-1497), the first polyphonic example of a funeral mass with solemn and melancholic tones, an anthem to peace and serenity. For the festival’s closing on April 7, another great Flemish master’s Requiem, Pierre de La Rue (ca. 1452-1518), will be performed.

The Printemps des Arts opens and closes this edition with two extraordinary pages of sacred music, marking the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. For the opening concert, Ockegem’s music will be accompanied by contemporary works by Berio (“Sequenze” VIIb and IXb) and Mantovani (“Rondes de printemps”) dedicated to the saxophone, played by Sandro Compagnon, a young and talented musician with international experience spanning classical to jazz. The evening will also feature the Ensemble Gilles Binchois directed by Dominique Vellard.

On Thursday, March 14, at the Auditorium Rainier III, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra will perform masterpieces by Richard Strauss, including the symphonic poems “Aus Italien” and “Don Juan,” and magnificent lieder for voice and orchestra, highlighting the poetic vein and passion of the German composer. Before the concert, a “backstage immersion” will give the audience the opportunity to meet the artists in a guided tour behind the scenes. The evening concert on Friday, March 15, at One Monte is dedicated to chamber masterpieces for violin, cello, and piano by Beethoven.

Saturday, March 16, offers a double appointment. The 6:00 PM concert at the Auditorium Rainier III is dedicated to Mahler and, in particular, two works representing his youth and maturity. The lyricism of Mahler’s “Piano Quartet” written at the age of eighteen is followed by the “Song of the Earth,” composed in the last years of his life, representing one of the highest points of his art.

Structured into six orchestral lieder for tenor and contralto, with texts from an anthology of Chinese poems, this composition with extensive instrumentation evokes feelings of poignant melancholy. The chamber version of Reinbert De Leeuw for fifteen instruments and two voices will be performed by the Het Collectief Ensemble and soloists Lucile Richardot (mezzo-soprano) and Stefan Cifolelli (tenor). At 8:00 PM at the Théâtre des Variétés, the world premiere of the opera “L’étoffe inépuisable du rêve” (“The Inexhaustible Fabric of Dreams”) by Sophie Lacaze, with libretto by Alain Carré, will take place.

Inspired by an Australian Aboriginal legend about the origin of the world, this score reflects on the current state of nature and its fragile balances increasingly threatened by human recklessness. The Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain directed by Bruno Mantovani will interpret the opera. On Sunday, March 17 (at 11:00 AM), the first weekend concludes with Wim Wenders’ film “Il sale della terra,” dedicated to the life and art of Sebastião Salgado, considered one of the world’s greatest photographers.

The festival continues with events ranging from medieval to contemporary music, passing through the classical and pre-Romantic style of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to the 19th-century works of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and reaching the 20th-century compositions of Messiaen, Boulez, and Rihm.

Nature and animals will take center stage in the concerts by the Amazing Keystone Big Band, which will swing Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals” (March 31), and the Ensemble Unisoni, presenting a kind of musical bestiary from the Baroque era (March 30).

The Printemps des Arts is a celebration of music, but not only. This year, too, there will be performances and alchemies suggesting suggestive symmetries between music, other arts, and the senses. Taste will be a key player.

The encounter between music and visual arts will be highlighted during the “musical walk” at the exhibition of the Bolognese artist Pier Paolo Calzolari at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco: composers Lara Morciano, Samir Amarouch, and Eric Monatalbetti will present three world premieres each, commissioned by the festival (March 24 and April 7).