FESTIVAL DE MUSIQUE DE BEAULIEU-SUR-MER
19th – 26th September 2004
Festival Director: John Fox
A Commemoration of the Centenary of the Entente Cordiale
8 concerts - 18 lectures - 4 exhibitions – 2 military parades
The Festival de Musique de Beaulieu-sur-Mer in 2004 commemorates the centenary of the Entente Cordiale and the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Beaulieu-sur-Mer and her neighbouring towns by Allied Forces.
With a reputation for excellence and ambitious thematic programming, the Festival de Musique de Beaulieu-sur-Mer is one of the most dynamic classical music festivals in south-eastern France, presenting artists of world-standing to a local and cosmopolitan audience drawn from the Côte d’Azur, the region and abroad. Under the joint patronage of the British Ambassador to France, Sir John Holmes, and the French Ambassador to Great Britain, Gérard Errera, this year’s festival is the only arts festival in France and Great Britain devoting its entire programme exclusively to the Entente Cordiale theme.
Through a week of concerts, lectures and exhibitions, the Festival will highlight important developments in political, social and cultural relations between France and Great Britain over the past 400 years, giving expression to the cultural exchange between French and British composers, French musical compositions commissioned by British patrons or having their first performance in Great Britain, musical compositions written for peace treaties between France and Great Britain, and French and British composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were traversing the English Channel.
The Festival is proud to share special partnerships with the Conseil Général des Alpes-Maritimes and the Scottish Executive. The Conseil Général has made available the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nice Opera Chorus and the Nice Philharmonic Choir. The Scottish Executive has made available the Scottish Ensemble (from Glasgow), as well as giving financial support to all Scottish events in the Festival.
International artists appearing in the concerts include: world-renowned British pianist, Peter Donohoe; Scotland’s leading chamber orchestra, the Scottish Ensemble; one of France’s finest symphony orchestras, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice; the Nice Opera Chorus; the internationally acclaimed French soprano, Elisabeth Vidal; the Scottish tenor, David Maxwell Anderson; the Band of the Scots Guards; the Band of the French Mediterranenan Fleet; the Italian tenor, Luca Lombardo; the foremost French string quartet, Quatuor Ysaÿe; and two up-and-coming young artists, French pianist David Kadouch and the BBC Young Musician of the Year, Vanessa Williamson, a clarinetist.
Patrons of the festival include: the Archbishop of York, the Most Revd & Rt Hon. David Hope; the Most Hon. The Marquess of Huntly; the French Ambassador to UNESCO, Jean Guéguinou; the American conductor, William Christie; international opera singer Barbara Hendricks; The Most Hon. The Marquess of Salisbury; and Vice Admiral Jean-Marie Van HUFFEL, Préfet maritime of the Mediterranean.
The festival’s lecture series presents a distinguished body of academics, diplomats and artists, including Dr Edward Corp, Professor of British History at Toulouse University; Sir John Holmes, British Ambassador to France; Gérard Errera, French Ambassador to Great Britain; Ian Dunlop, author of King Edward VII and the Entente Cordiale; former Reuter’s General Manager, Michael Nelson; French music critics André Peyrègne and André Segond; Julie Lawson, Curator of the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland; Dr Peter France, Professor of French at Edinburgh University; French musiclogoist and sports journalist, Robert Parienté.
The visit of a French warship to the Bay of Beaulieu on the 25th & 26th September and parades with the Scots Guards Band and the French Navy Band of Toulon add a military dimension to the Festival’s Entente Cordiale commemoration, as well as offering simultaneously the chance of celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the town by Allied Forces.
The Festival offers the French and British communities of the Alpes-Maritimes a unique opportunity to share jointly in the commemoration of the Entente Cordiale, and highlights the important contribution made by both communities to the creation and continuing development of the Côte d’Azur.
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