● Festival de Pâques will broadcast five free-to-view concerts from the sunlit
surroundings of Aix-en-Provence from 8 – 12 April 2022.
● The online concerts are a snapshot of this major spring festival’s offerings for
2022, which will see the festival put French orchestras in the spotlight,
alongside classical music’s biggest stars.
● Audiences will be able to watch the online concerts each evening at 8.30pm
CEST / 7.30pm BST on the festival’s online platform, which they can find at
www.festivalpaques.com/en.
● Barbara Hannigan will open the online series with Philharmonique de Radio
France for a performance of Mozart’s well-loved Requiem. The concert will
stream live at 7.30pm BST on 8 April, and will also appear on ARTE Concert.
● Then, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice will appear under Lionel
Bringuier, who will make his Festival de Pâques debut alongside Renaud
Capuçon for a memorable concert comprising Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1,
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau). The concert
will stream live at 7.30pm BST on 9 April.
● Elsewhere, Stéphane Degout and Michel Dalberto will join together to present
a programme of Schumann’s lieders and the French melodies of Fauré and
Ropartz. The concert will stream at 7.30pm BST on 10 April.
● For the first time, the Festival de Pâques is taking place at the Camp des
Milles, which, between 1941 and 1942, was used as a transit camp for Jews
prior to deportation. In a poignant place of memory, Renaud Capuçon, Hélène
Mercier-Arnault, Kian Soltani and Andreas Ottensamer will present
Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which the composer wrote whilst in a
Silesian prisoner of war camp during the winter of 1941. The concert will
stream live at 7.30pm BST on 11 April.
● Then, Maria João Pires will bring a lively and refined interpretation of Mozart’s
Piano Concerto No 9 with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. The
concert will stream at 7.30pm BST on 12 April, and will also appear on ARTE
Concert.
● The Festival de Pâques is running from 8 to 24 April 2022, and will feature 4
public masterclasses, 10 venues, 31 concerts and over 800 artists.
● For this edition, the festival has chosen to give a voice to French orchestras,
ensembles of excellence who have faced great difficulty over the past seasons.
● Founded by Artistic Director and violinist Renaud Capuçon with Executive
Director Dominique Bluzet, the festival brings together and offers the best
classical music experiences for music lovers everywhere.
● The Festival de Pâques is supported by Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC),
its founding partner. Dedicated to culture, the CIC has developed a policy of
partnerships to promote classical music and heritage conservation initiatives
since 2003.
● In 2021, the Festival de Pâques was the first classical music festival in France
to offer a free, entertaining and high-quality digital edition, using
multi-camera technology. The digital festival was watched by one and a half
million people for all the concerts.