The ‘heroes’ of the festival’s second day were the guitar duo — Dimitri Illarionov and Emmanuel Rossfelder, pianist Betrand Chamayou and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Domingo Hindoyan.

In Annecy’s Castle Museum the festival audience was treated for the first time to guitar duets played by the Russian guitarist Dimitri Illarionov, already well-known to the Annecy public after his previous concert with the cellist, Boris Andrianov, and Emmanuel Rossfelder, a leading light among French guitar-players.

These musicians are extremely serious and intellectual virtuosi. The two excellent soloists were bound to come together as an ensemble sooner or later. Pascale Escande had encouraged the idea. Their performance in Annecy was their third joint appearance in France. This pairing is bound to enjoy a spectacular future. The two musicians were clearly at ease with each other on stage and engaged in open dialogue with their audiences.

Festival audiences were also able to enjoy original works and arrangements for two guitars by Luigi Boccherini, Francisco Tárrega, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla and Astor Piazzolla.

It was striking to observe the quality of sound and impeccable style of the guitar-players and to note the natural and uninhibited way they responded to each other’s playing and complemented each other with their unusual levels of emotion and sparkling charisma.

In the concert hall of the town’s Bonlieu Theatre, the traditional evening devoted to symphonic music began with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Slavonic March, written by the composer in response to the events of the Russo-Turkish War (echoes of Alexei Lvov’s anthem, God Save the Tsar can be heard in this powerful symphonic piece).

The young French pianist Bertrand Chamayou, who tends more often to participate in programs of chamber music, performed on this occasion as a soloist in Saint-Saëns’ Second Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. For his encore Chamayou treated the audience to a deeply personal interpretation of Maurice Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, remarkable for its intellectual sensitivity and the supple nature of its musical phrasing.

Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony was the final work in the concert given by Saint Petersburg’s Philarmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan.

Naturally there was a final encore as well — one of Antonin Dvořák’s popular Slavonic Dances — Dumka, Opus 72, No. 2.

Victor Alexandrov, the AVC Charity Foundation music reviewer