)
Pierre Bleuse, the new director of the Pablo Casals Festival, has taken on the mission of making the event known on an international scale, while at the same time anchoring it in the region and reaching out to the public. He tells us about the challenges of a program full of challenges.
You are taking over from Michel Lethiec and this is your first year at the head of the Pablo Casals Festival. Is this your first experience of running a festival?
When I finished my musical studies, I was involved in programming the " Summer Nights ", where I got my first taste of it, and then there was the "Winter Nights", where we came up with some great programmes. But all that is a long time ago. I was quickly absorbed by other activities: a violinist by training, I held the position of concertmaster at the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra until 2010. That was the year I set up a festival project with Norway in the form of economic and cultural exchanges, which were very positive and certainly put my foot in the door. However, I thought long and hard about accepting the proposal from Prada, knowing the responsibility and the work involved. The fact that I have had strong links with Catalonia since my childhood (my grandfather lived and is buried in Ria, the village next to Prades), certainly pushed me to take up the challenge. I was lucky enough, born into a family of musicians, to be introduced at a very early age to the contemporary repertoire, to baroque music on ancient instruments, and to the string quartet, which I practised for three years: all this experience has nourished me for a very long time and given me a host of ideas that I now want to share.
If the spirit of the festival, in the aura of the host and his cello, has been preserved, this year you have completely renewed the performers by inviting the elite of the artistic world to Prades.
I wanted to reopen the doors of the festival to a whole generation of performers with international careers who had never set foot on Catalan soil, and I had no trouble convincing Sol Gabetta, Bertrand Chamayou, Isabelle Faust, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, all of whom were very honoured to participate in a renowned event to which they had never been invited.
Gone is the academy and its white-coated masters. Your action towards the young generation takes a completely different turn.
I wanted to find another model than the academic "training course" which is very expensive for families... After this terrible period of silence and isolation that young people endured even more than ourselves during the pandemic, I wanted to bring them together, to create a platform for exchange, to consider them as artists and not students and also to pay them. This is how the idea of the Festival Orchestra was born, where each young person will receive 1500 euros for their participation in the concerts.
How did you go about recruiting?
I went to see the various European schools, the CNSM in Paris, the HEM in Lausanne and Geneva, the ESMUC in Barcelona, the Menuhin Academy and the Institut supérieur des Arts in Toulouse. I explained my project to them and asked them for financial support for travel and accommodation for the young people. They all responded positively and I hope to get European money to compensate them in the coming years.
In your project, you mention the example of the Malboro Music School and Festival, where the professionals coach the youngest.
I was inspired by this by providing coaches, in this case members of the Dutilleux and Klarthe Quartets , to supervise the young people within the orchestra and to advise them on their chamber music concerts in the morning: a way of creating a link between the generations that are going to work and play together. I am conducting the opening and closing concerts, but I have also brought in two personalities, the Spaniard Josep Pons and the Russian Vladimir Spivakov, who have done me the honour of accepting this challenge. I want to create an orchestra with a very strong artistic ambition and invite conductors who set the bar very high.
On the creation side, you have a composer in residence this year, two of whose works are on the festival programme...
I met Daniel Arango-Prada, a young Colombian composer, during the finals of the 2019 Geneva Composition Competition which I directed. I was enthusiastic about his piece for oboe and ensemble Dune, which won the competition, and I was keen to include it in the programme for this first edition, inviting the Lemanic Modern Ensemble, which created it. The Festival also commissioned him to write a work for string quartet and voice, which will be performed in the Grottes des Grandes Canalettes with the Bela Quartet and the soprano Julia Wischniewski. I wanted Daniel Arango-Prada to come with a group of young composers who would stay for the whole festival. This did not happen, but in the future I would like to give this residency even more influence by inviting the public to meetings and rehearsals. My idea is to put the creators back at the forefront of a festival that has long glorified the performers.
There is also the question of where to put this creation to use...
We are indeed working on it; I have found a superb place, the old bowling alley, opposite the Prades train station, where work is in progress and which should be operational in 2022. It will becomethe Club for the duration of the festival: a convivial place where one can come to have a drink and listen to the concert at 10:30 pm, with a jazz, contemporary, electro or audio-visual tendency. This year, we have proposed five such evenings at the Château Pams, in the park of the Prades town hall. It is the perfect opportunity to cross aesthetics and audiences with original proposals and to bring in new technologies, as it would be appropriate to do in a space like the Grottes de Corneilla de Conflent.
Finally, I would like to address the thorny issue of parity in the programming. Will women be featured in the 2022 and subsequent editions, as they are absent this year?
As it happens, I conduct a lot of works by women composers and I intend to include them in future editions. Nothing has been decided yet, but I would very much like the next guest to be a female composer. And I will also encourage performers to include works by women in their repertoire. The same problem exists in the world of conducting, and I am very pleased that this year we have Nil Venditti, a young Italian-Turkish conductor who will be leading the Lemanic Modern Ensemble.
What is your dearest wish for this festival?
That it be a place of exchange and openness; that musicians, audiences and artists from all walks of life meet there. I want to take my time and build a programme that has meaning and soul.
"Sol Gabetta live from the festival, the opening concert, on France Musique, here
Interview by Michèle Tosi
