The summer season of Concerts at the Prince’s Palace opens in the Principality of Monaco this month. Given by the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and featuring a series of illustrious conductors and soloists, these concerts take place in the glorious surroundings of the Cour d’Honneur at the Prince’s Palace.
The opening concert of this season, on 16th July, is led by the OPMC’s Music Director Kazuki Yamada and features Daniil Trifonov playing the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 4, with Brahms’ First Symphony also on the programme. This concert has already sold out.
It is followed, on Thursday 20th July, by a performance of Erich Korngold’s wonderfully romantic Violin Concerto by violinist Gil Shaham – said by the New York Times to be “…among the most inspired violinists of his generation”. The concert is led by Fabien Gabel, Music Director designate of the Viennese Tonkünstler Orchestra as of the 2025/26 season, and “One of the rising stars of the new generation of international conductors”, says Lëtzebuerger Land. Also on the programme are Gustav Mahler’s Blumine, Josef Strauss’ Musique des Sphères and Maurice Ravel’s “choreographic poem” La Valse, written originally as a ballet, but now more often heard as a concert piece.
Ottavio Dantone leads the concert on Sunday 23rd July. An internationally accomplished organist and harpsichordist, Dantone has also made his name as the music director of chamber and small orchestras, as well as having conducted performances in some of the world’s finest opera houses. Solo violinist Giuliano Carmignola plays Jean-Sébastien Bach’s Violin Concerto No 1, and is then joined by oboist Matthieu Petit Jean in a performance of Jean-Sébastien Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin. The concert ends with Mozart’s Symphony No 38, known as the Prague, a symphony written for that city because of the popularity of his opera Le nozze di Figaro there.
French conductor and violinist Jean-Christophe Spinosi – founder of the Ensemble Matheus – leads the OPMC and soloist Daniel Lozakovich in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 3, known as the Strasbourg. Lozakovich’s tone, according to the Hamburger Abendblatt “…resonates with the Romantic warmth of such forebears as Christian Ferras or Jascha Heifetz”. The other work on the programme for Thursday 27th July is Beethoven’s popular Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale.
The soloist in the concert on Thursday 3rd August is cellist Marc Coppey, whom Télérama says “…. is rightly part of the great tradition of French cellists”. He plays Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto in a performance conducted by Lawrence Foster, Music Director of Marseille Opera, as well as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The opening work is Brahms’ lovely Variations on a Theme by Haydn – known as the Saint Anthony Variations – and the concert ends in sprightly mood with Brahms’ Hungarian Dances Nos 1 to 5.
The final concert in this season of symphony concerts at the Prince’s Palace takes place on Sunday 6th August. Jaap van Zweden – Music Director of the New York Philharmonic since 2018, and of the Hong Kong Philharmonic since 2012 – leads the performance. International recitalist, soloist and chamber musician, French pianist David Fray, plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 21, known as Elvira Madigan, as the second movement featured in the 1967 Swedish film of that name. The season is brought to a close with Beethoven’s Symphony No 7, another major work synonymous with the world of cinema, as the Allegretto was memorably used in the film The King’s Speech.
Reservations for the Concerts at the Prince’s Palace can be made online via this link.
Information sourced from:
OPMC programme notes
Artists’ websites
This article first appeared in Riviera Buzz