Coming to Prades, in this Conflent which is no longer a confine, but a
open territory, a window on Catalonia and Europe,
me a double meaning: that of the encounter between creation
music and heritage, and the recognition of these
ties of cooperation and friendship that are being created today, with the support of
the European Union, in the border territories.
The Pyrenees, beyond the identity and singularity of their valleys,
are a European land. It is after many stays in this
department with rough mountains and rustling rivers – in the image
of Têt - that Prosper Mérimée, the inventor of the heritage policy
in our country, built its ambitious policy of protection and
census. It is as heir to humanist and democratic values:
he who had fled Francoism - guaranteeing a certain idea of Europe
that Pablo Casals decided to create, in 1950, the first festival
of Prades. He intended to celebrate the bicentenary of Bach’s death
(1750) amidst a circle of faithful friends and the local population of
Prades. Even if the master didn’t like to be told about his career
However, this was the way out of those years of silence.
The opponent of Franquism was given a European answer:
1950, Casals chooses to show the world the famous
Bach Suites.
Thereafter, he participates every year in the festival that will bear his name, in
after his departure from the city of Prades, in 1966, for other
musical horizons.
“Horizons” was also the title given by Michel Lethiec at the 2008 edition
of the Pablo Casals Festival. Indeed, your fiery artistic director,
talented musician, likes to give a title to the various editions and
sometimes also at their concerts, to invent other paths and others
ways of living this summer festival, which I live intensely through my
«tour de France», which has been underway for a few weeks.
Thus this 2011 edition promises us, without the 7th sky, to climb the
“Chamber Music Summits”: a program in accordance with
landscape. For those who love music, it is sometimes necessary to be a good walker: the
concert of August 31, at the chalet of Cortalets, will take place at 5:22 am
In the morning, after 3 hours of walking on the trail to attend the
sunrise on the Canigou! If every «morning of the world» could
go like this…
Last year the festival invited us to the 60th anniversary of the music
chamber music. Music lovers of heritage still have in
the exceptional evening in duplex with the Museum of the Cloisters of
New York whose history is closely linked to that of the cloister of Saint
Michel de Cuxà. In the summer of 2009, the edition called Cosmophonia
put his head in the stars with a guest of honor,
astrophysicist and music lover: Hubert Reeves…
Further from us, the year 2004 greeted in its own way the entry of 10
new countries in the European Union through an edition «Welcome to
Europe». The Mozart Year in 2006 has inspired the director and his team
an amazing edition called “www.Mozart.com”.
In Prades, imagination and humour hold a special place alongside the
It’s a serious, intimate world of chamber music! I see it there
a mark of quality and requirement, translation of this «spirit of finesse»
of which Pascal spoke without which there is no sustainable cultural project and
believable.
Everyone will have understood, the excellent clarinettist Michel Lethiec, real
the cornerstone of this festival for nearly thirty years,
concocted a repertoire where the serious mixes with the playful, the
the unexpected. Bach and Pablo Casals are of course always in the spotlight, but
also many other composers among whom we will remember:
Liszt – this virtuoso for whom rhapsody can be hungarian, but also
rediscovered throughout the year on the occasion of the 200th
birthday of his birth - Wagner, Mozart, Granados, Ravel, Haydn,
Takemitsu, Ravel, Dutilleux, Rubinstein, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Glinka,
Turina…
But the Pablo Casals festival is also the Academy of
chamber, which has been held here every summer since 1976. It brings together the most
major international names in chamber music and
teaching, as well as very high-level student musicians:
National Conservatories of Music (CNSMD) Award of
Paris or Lyon, Conservatoires à rayonnement régional (CRR), prize
major foreign music faculties.
In recent years, the Academy has experienced a European development
European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA), in
partnership with several European universities such as
Hanover, Vienna, Zürich, Helsinki.
This development will increase further thanks to the work of the
Department of Musicology, Paul Valéry University of Montpellier, at
researchers, who are currently working on the implementation of the
Master in Musicological Research and Chamber Music, in
partnership with the festival.
I am delighted that this festival, with its deep roots, with its
characteristic and singular, with national and international influence
has been supported for several years by the State, by
the intermediary of the DRAC Languedoc Roussillon.
In 2007, a first multiannual agreement of objectives bringing together
the State, the Languedoc-Roussillon Region, the Département des Pyrénées-
Oriental and the City of Prades was signed. Relying on the figure
emblematic of Pablo Casals, it was a question of promoting a regional pole
in Prades, around chamber music, whose missions
the dissemination and transmission of knowledge, knowledge and
training of future soloists and instrumentalists. Both the development of
activities of the Academy, whether that of patrons and partners or the
distribution in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, but also above,
led the State to confirm its support and strengthen it, through
an agreement for the period 2011-2014, which I was pleased to sign at
the moment.
Through this commitment, the Pablo Casals Festival is now
fully recognized by the State and public institutions as a project
artistic excellence. Its influence, as I said, is national and
international: some decentralized concerts take place at the Théâtre des
Champs Elysées in Paris during the winter, but also abroad, they are
broadcast on France-Musique, France-Culture or France Télévision.
This new convention marks, I have no doubt, a new stage
projects that are important to you: a
educational excellence, the culmination of the
link with the University of Montpellier, but also digitization and
the exploitation of remarkable archival holdings, accessible through the
portal of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, whose
President for its availability. I am indeed convinced that the tool
and enhances public access to the performing arts, the
culture: far from distancing it, it supports it; far from diverting it,
arouse the desire and appetite to know. And I have no doubt that in the future
European cross-border programmes will be able to
to this exemplary place for the Europe of culture and
training, this place, which is also a cultural melting pot looking to the future,
the image of the annual “Composition Competition”.
In Prades, in the shady streets preserved from the Pyrenean sun,
even the stones speak. They tell the heritage of this land to
values, deep spirituality, poetry so powerful. The
Suites for cello, the Brandenburg Concertos, the
birds: these rare and precious moments heard in Prades, in this
abbey full of history, participate in the cultural universe and heritage
And this festival, in its own way a European “place of memory”,
is part of the great ambition that must be ours, that of the countries
to transmit, enhance and re-enchant this heritage
which shapes our ear as much as it makes us faithful heirs of
who knew, through the beauty of music, to invent the paths of his
freedom but also create a human manifestation, at the same time
endearing and radiant. In Prades, the master is indeed
present, but the memories are discreet, respectful: no place for the
nostalgia, but the will to make the instruments speak and to make live a
place where the spirit breathes, his spirit, the one where the music knows how to make itself silence and
the silence become melody.
Thank you.