Published on March 07, 2023Updated on June 28, 2024
For his second edition as director of the festival, Bruno Mantovani continues to explore the theme “Ma fin est mon commencement”, taking us on a journey through history, American rhythms, and beyond.
This season, Bruno Mantovani, artistic director of the Printemps des Arts Monte-Carlo, is approaching classical music by considering it in terms of developments, with continuities, ruptures, evolutions and encounters. The departure point is a roundel in the form of a musical palindrome by musician and poet Guillaume de Machaut: Ma fin est mon commencement, Et mon commencement est ma fin. The idea is to present both youthful and mature works by composers, and to offer a programme that blends styles and periods. For example, the festival invites audiences to (re)discover the piano works of the musician and poet Alexander Scriabin, with readings by Anna Akhmatova. The format highlights the rhythms of poetry and the bridges that exist between the arts, like the musical readings proposed by Laurent Stocker, a member of the Comédie Française, based on the book Rimbaud le fils, or Antigone.
Picture: Bruno Mantovani at the piano and Sandro Compagnon during the first after party at the Crystal Bar at the Hermitage Hotel, in March 2022
This Printemps festival also features performances by ensembles such as Quatuor Diotima, who are regular participants in the event. The string instrument quartet will play early and late works written for this musical genre by Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and György Ligeti. Having focused on Armenia last year, the festival heads to the United States, welcoming Betsy Jolas and her new composition BTunes – a reference to iTunes software – and presenting pieces by Elliott Carter, winner of the Musical Composition Prize awarded by the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation twentyfive years ago. The festival is strongly committed to knowledge transfer, and has organised a series of events where audiences can meet and talk with guest composers, performers and musicologists, either pre-concert, or post-concert at the Crystal Bar in the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo.
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