Busman’s holiday

Two weeks of music, sun, wine and good company in France? Yes, please! Summer festivals are one of the perks of being a classical musician

In all the doomchat about classical music, one thing sometimes gets forgotten. Classical musicians are usually very lovely people – smart, hard-working and responsible. I was reminded of this on the way from Nice airport to Seillans on the way to this year’s Musique Cordiale festival, as I had a super-geeky conversation about Schubert symphonies with some young players. These are not people who are going to riot or wield knives (other than to make the perfect oboe reed).

Another thing about classical musicians is that they don’t seem to like holidays very much. At least not the kind where you sit around all day doing nothing. That’s why you can track them in the summer months darting around Europe to play concerts at one festival or another, crossing musical paths with old friends, making merry, and grabbing enough time by a pool and cold wine to feel recharged for the new season. Summer is one of the perks of the job.  

Crossing musical paths and making merry just about defines the Musique Cordiale experience – it’s even in the name. The festival was started 20 years ago by classical music PR guru Pippa Pawlik in Seillans, in the Var region of France, where she had just bought a house. It has evolved through various stages since then – early on it used to stage full-on outdoor operas, but after the double whammy of Brexit and Covid, it’s a little scaled back, and next year Pippa and Jonathan hand over to a new generation of organisers. I went for the first time in 2016, and this year was my sixth visit.

Musique Cordiale is not one of those corporate-style festivals that impress with their slick organisation, sleek marketing and insistent fundraising. It’s far more charming and personal than that. It’s fundamentally a labour of love, with Pippa and her partner Jonathan Barker at the helm, leading a team of steadfast volunteers through programming dilemmas, sheet music issues, housing crises, medical emergencies, lost property, and travel logistics that included an arson attack on the French train network. This year they had the added demands of catering for the entire festival. If it sometimes has the air of a swan, with furious paddling beneath the surface, somehow it sails on by in stately magnificence. As we often say at the end of a concert that really shouldn’t have been as successful as it actually was: ‘It’s the Musique Cordiale way’.

Seillans itself is a beautiful little medieval ‘ville perché’ with innumerable little cobbled alleyways that climb ineluctably to the 13^th-century church where many of the symphonic and choral concerts happen. There are also lunchtime chamber concerts in various churches around the area – the journeys through the landscape and visits to tiny mountainside villages are all part of the experience.

The audience is a mix of locals, tourists and ex-pat Brits with summerhouses in the area. Most have been coming for years and the concerts are usually packed. The church doors remain open for curious passersby, including kids and dogs, to sample the music. In the second week, the amateur choir turns up for coaching towards the final great choral performance – Verdi’s Requiem this year – conducted by Graham Ross.

The orchestra itself is a delightfully random collection of players: orchestra section principals and players, and chamber musicians from some of the UK’s leading groups (some retired) as well as conservatoire students, freelancers, music teachers and the odd lucky amateur, such as me. I’m not sure how it gets fixed, but serendipity plays a large part. There are some regular players, and newcomers are often last-minute recommendations by friends. Soloists and singers are often up-and-coming rising stars, or in the case of the timpanist, the legendary Tristan Fry.

Inevitably, the people who enjoy it most are those who are adaptable and prepared to muck in musically. On minimal rehearsal time, performances aren’t always technically perfect, but talent, experience and spontaneity do a lot of heavy lifting and concerts are usually thrilling, and always well-received.

In the evenings, we all come together under a long tent in the car park of the village community centre, to eat, chat and drink from the boxes of local rosé that are on offer at most points of the day (the official ‘cordial’). The other constant is the heat. This year felt hotter than previous years, to the point of brain befuddlement, not to mention the challenge of holding a violin under a very ‘glowing’ chin. Access to a swimming pool is a must, and the time to get from pool to stage gets shorter by the day.

The conversations under the tent are often very geeky indeed – bow holds, instrument care, favourite recordings. It feels like a safe space to care so much about these things in a world which probably deems them ‘elitist’. (I was sad, though, speaking to the younger players, to hear them comparing stories about sleazy and vicious teachers and conductors. I had hoped that the culture had changed since I was a student decades ago, but it seems not – there’s work to do.)

What makes Musique Cordiale so special? It’s a combination of all of the above ingredients – talent, fun, flexibility, a release from daily life, a little bit of chaos, and the joy of being among like-minded people of all generations: all in a beautiful setting where the sun nearly always shines. It also bears the hallmark of Pippa herself – her charm and free spirit combined with a generosity and expert guiding vision, plus a certain faith that if you put the right pieces in the right place, things will all come right in the end. Because they usually do. What more could anyone want from a holiday?