Open air concerts

Saint-Pierre - Mâcon

Open air concerts have one major disadvantage: they are rather weather dependant. We realised that again when we decided to go to a concert on the square in front of the Eglise Saint-Pierre in Mâcon by the Mâcon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Geneste. We had not been very lucky anyway that evening; halfway Cluny and Mâcon a truck got stuck on the part that is a two-lane road, hence the cars were alternately lead past the obstacle via the one free lane.

Brahms

Fortunately we had left home early enough, at least that is what we thought. After having been able to drive into Mâcon at normal speed we found out that the road through town had been closed, and the centre was a chaos of searching car drivers trying to find their way through the town. Still we were in time on the crime scene to arrest some seats on the last row.

Brahms

The musicians did not gather inside the church as was to be expected but elsewhere in town, hence we regularly saw some horn players, violinists or clarinettists wandering across the square towards the stage. Very un-French the concert started at 21h10 instead of 21h00 (normal would have been 21h30) with Brahms's Hungarian Dances no. 1, 4 and 5. The church behind the orchestra was colourfully illuminated, the music was very pleasant, in a word, the concert could not have started off better.

Dvořák

The fourth and last piece on the program was Dvořák's cello concerto with soloist Sung-Won-Yang. The first of its 3 parts was wonderful, but after the last notes had sounded it started to rain. The conductor announced, while the musicians brought their instruments into safety, that the concert would continue in 10 minutes time. However, since we had not brought any rain clothing and since it did not look like the rain would stop in 10 minutes, we decided not to get wetter than strictly necessary and drive home as dry as was possible.

Dvořák

Anyway, having heard this orchestra once, we will start looking for a program booklet for the next season, assuming that the orchestra also performs every so often under cover.
Click here for the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.

Connections

Once a year Cluny hosts a series of concerts as part of the "Festival Musical des Grandes Heures de Cluny".

Our seats

Since we are not exactly inundated here with concerts by top musicians we always keep an eye out for the programming of the series. One of the concerts would take place in the cloister of the abbey, featuring the Camerata of the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouworkest conducted by Lucas Macías Navarro. They would play the Ouverture classique avec quelques bagatelles of Dvořák (for accordion, 2 violins and cello) and a special arrangement by Erwin Stein of Mahler's 4th Symphony. Even though I do not exactly jump with joy when I hear the name of Gustav Mahler, it is also not very often one gets a chance to hear a Chamber orchestra of the Royal Concertgebouworkest performing in Cluny.

Dvořák

Tickets were arranged very quickly through the internet, and because the seating used to be free within the chosen price range, we were there quite early in order not to sit at the back.
The President of this festival is the trumpet player Guy Touvron, who also happens to organise "our" Festival Guitares en Cormatinois. When we entered the cloister, we saw Guy and his wife Isabel seated at the table meant for selling tickets. Both of them waived at us. Isabel, who coordinates the internet tickets, had stumbled upon my name, and had made sure there were two places for us available on the first row.

Mahler

The chairs should have a piece of paper attached to it with my name on it.
Everything worked out as planned, and we never had had such good seats for a concert. The concert itself was excellent as well. Stein's arrangement of Mahler's symphony sounded every so often quite modern, maybe due to the fact that Stein knew both Maher and Schönberg personally.
And now we are waiting for the next concert!

Mahler

Click here for the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.