Ivan HewettAix-en-Provence hardly needs a festival to be lovely in spring. The peonies and fruit trees are in bloom, you can smell the rosemary, and the Provencal hills shimmer in the morning heat-haze.
Still the newish Aix Easter Festival is a wonderful thing. Founded in 2013 and directed by famed violinist Renaud Capuçon, the aim is to be a Salzburg festival in the sun, with the best international artists alongside local performing groups. Last night, in the concert hall in the city’s eye-catchingly modernist Conservatoire (which began life in the same year as the festival) the venerable American-born British-domiciled pianist Stephen Kovacevich played Beethoven’s penultimate and Schubert’s last sonatas, followed up by star tenor Juan Diego Flórez singing alongside rising soprano Marina Monzó.
Both piano works seem to come from some remote region beyond earthly cares, and before beginning both pieces Kovacevich closed his eyes and frowned, as if measuring that huge spiritual distance. The performances when they emerged were very gentle and meditative, and, it has to be admitted, sometimes hesitant. The Kovacevich who used to electrify us with his biting incisive performances of Bartok and the “heroic” middle-period Beethoven seemed a distant memory. Yet there was a wisdom in Kovacevich’s delicate balancing of the inner parts, and the way the final fugue in Beethoven’s sonata emerged from pedalled haze into blazing clarity was wonderful. In the closing pages of the finale of Schubert’s sonata, which he flung off with a “to hell with it” recklessness, something of Kovacevich’s old fire reappeared.
The following concert was very different, scaling no spiritual heights but offering a breath-taking display of vocal pyrotechnics and extravagantly romantic emotions, expressed through operatic arias and duets. The two artists were at very different levels in terms of reputation. Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez has been a superstar for over quarter of a century thanks to his blazingly heroic light tenor, an incredible vocal agility that’s perfect for Italian bel canto repertoire, and a top C to die for. Spanish soprano Marina Monzó on the other hand is only in her late 20s, and though she’s now performing Rossini and Verdi roles to great acclaim has hardly been seen in the UK.
That could change, as she’s clearly a huge talent. Of course Flórez has the advantage of an irresistible swagger in his singing that comes from years of experience. So even when he struck a tender note, as he did in his aria from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamonix, he still wowed us with the high-wire virtuosity of the final high note, which faded away to electrifying effect. But the voice doesn’t have quite the body and sheen it had twenty years ago.
Monzó’s delicate soprano on the other hand is in its perfect, springtime bloom, and although her vocal agility is spellbinding she doesn’t let it take centre-stage. She uses it instead to express real feeling, so that even Gounod’s sugary aria “Je veux vivre” from his Roméo et Juliette took on a real power to move. As well as being aurally seductive the contrast between the two singers also fitted the traditional gender stereotypes of romantic opera to a T, which is why their final duet, the lovely O soave fanciulla from Puccini’s La Bohème absolutely brought the house down. IH
The Aix Easter Festival continues until 24 April; festivalpaques.com
