The third day of the festival opened with a master class given by the well-known French pianist, Roger Muraro. Young pianists, who had recently graduated from various music schools and colleges, took part in this event.

In the evening a concert was given in Saint Peter’s Cathedral by Pierre Queval, the principal organist in the Church of Saint Ignatius in Paris. The programme included organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach and César Franc, arrangements of piano pieces by Robert Schumann and also improvisations on particular given themes.

One of the highlights of the festival is always the concert performed by the Campus Annecy youth orchestra. Its main conductor Fayçal Karoui had once again undertaken intensive rehearsals with the young musicians of this orchestra and prepared a far from simple program to put before the public.

After the overture to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide there followed Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, for which Denis Matsuev was the soloist.

The jewel of this programme was to be Antonin Dvořák’s New World Symphony. Each of the soloists demonstrated his skill and high level of performance. Special praise was due to the woodwind players.

The audiences here are already used to Fayçal Karoui’s traditional encore — Arturo Márquez’ Danzon No. 2 (a colourful orchestral ‘sketch’ from the repertoire of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela). This piece brings us a boundless ocean of imagination, humour and radiant energy and naturally the actual element of the dance cannot fail to appeal to the audience, which applauded enthusiastically as it revelled in the Latin-American rhythms.

A complete contrast to that experience was the late concert in St. Bernadette’s Church, where everyone could enjoy a splendid performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis by soloists from one of the authoritative ensembles in the world of music played on period instruments, namely the Matheus Ensemble, and from the chamber choir Mélisme(s) with its musical director Jean-Christophe Spinosi.

The vocalists taking part were well-known and inspiring artists from a range of different countries: Adriana Kučerová (soprano: Slovakia), Jose Maria Lo Monaco (mezzo-soprano: Spain), Julian Pregardien (tenor: Germany) and Luigi Di Donato (bass: Italy).

Jean-Christophe Spinosi went out of his way to bring out the architectonics of the mass, making it possible to do justice to the artistic integrity and majesty of the various polyphonic sections and choral passages. The conductor succeeded in taking his audience with him to heights of creative splendour, of which we can normally only dream. He paid particular attention to tempos, duly observing the proportions of the form and the dramatic contrasts in Beethoven’s masterpiece.

Victor Alexandrov, the AVC Charity Foundation music reviewer