Green as if it were raining, an explosion of meadows and forests, wooden chalets punctuated with shutters and balconies in apple, olive, fir or celadon colours: if there is a single place on the planet where global warming not yet obvious, it is indeed in the magnificent Saanenland, which saw the great Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) put down his violin box and found, in 1957, the summer festival which still bears his name. Like everywhere, the Covid has done its work. “So as not to disappear in 2020, we have maintained a very tight edition in the digital version, then resumed in 2021, with a gauge reduced by 50%”, explains Christoph Müller, director of the event since 2002. That is to say that the seven weeks of the festival won back this season symbolize hope.
Entitled “Vienna: Beethoven Delayed”, in tribute to the German composer, whose 2020 edition was unable to honor the 250e birthday, this 66e edition, dedicated to Vienna (after Paris in 2019), imagined the pandemic contained. But the seventh wave got the better of the monumental Mass, scheduled for opening. Too many musicians positive for SARS-CoV-2 among the choristers of the RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin and the instrumentalists of the Freiburger Barockorchester. Downsizing and a new Beethoven exile. It’s the rare Mass in time of warde Haydn, suivie du Requiem, by Mozart, which finally resounded, on July 15, in the beautiful church of Saanen, under the direction of the baroque conductor René Jacobs.
Aura Philanthropist
A magnificent concert, with an evocative power all the more moving than the “Mass for a time of war”, also called “Paukenmesse” because of the timpani that punctuate its warlike outbursts, was written by Haydn in 1796, when General Bonaparte’s first campaign in Italy made Austrian troops fear the invasion of Vienna. The beauty of each choral section, of unequaled homogeneity and precision, the excellence of the orchestra on period instruments, the incandescent sobriety of the maestro, who conducts seated, but triggers salvos with a glance patriotism and deep contemplation, all this galvanizes and seizes to the point of breathtaking. Like these climaxes pushed to the climax of the apoplectic rupture.
Stretched like a bow in a surge of faster than usual tempos, this “Mass of the Dead” will testify to the same qualities of rigor, virtuosity and commitment on the part of the performers.
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