Festival Mozart dans la Drôme - Renaud Capuçon & Guillaume Bellow - Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Elgar, Schumann, Massenet, Kreisler & Morricone 07/07/25

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 33 in E-flat Major, K. 481 

Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor, Op. 30, No. 2 

Claude Debussy: Clair de lune 

Edward Elgar: Salut d’amour 

Robert Schumann: Romance No. 2 

Jules Massenet: Méditation from Thais 

Fritz Kreisler: Liebesleid 

Ennio Morricone: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso 

Guillaume Bellow: Piano 

Renaud Capuçon: Violin 

Having gained a certain level of self-confidence and, let’s face it, cockiness, after the rain miraculously stopped right before the start of Sunday evening’s outdoor concert in Saôu’s Château d’Eure, my mom and I optimistically figured that we would be just as lucky for Monday evening’s concert of the Festival Mozart dans la Drôme, which was going to take place deep into Saôu’s impossibly lush forest, a magnificent background that would make even the most risk-adverse person go for it, at the equally hard-to-resist time of 7:00 PM. 

Reaching the stage, which was set up in the usual clearing right by the historical Petit Trianon-inspired Auberge des Dauphins museum, was a long journey that had to be made by car first, and then by foot, but it was totally worth the effort, especially since an impressive army of volunteers provided help along the way. Plus, what wouldn’t we do to go hear the wonderful violinist Renaud Capuçon and his long-time partner in music, the equally wonderful if slightly less famous, pianist Guillaume Bellow? 

On Monday afternoon the weather remained challenging with strong winds and black clouds threatening to spoil our fun, which it in fact temporarily did when we had to cool our heels in the dry (this time) grass while the piano was being retuned at the last minute because the wind had swept some pine needles into the unsuspecting instrument. But all was well that ended well, with particularly good seats and essentially no rain. 

Because of the late arrivals, the five (5!) speeches (A big thank you to the festival artistic director Philippe Bernolt for keeping his short, sweet, and to the point), and the still uncertain weather that could turn downright uncooperative at any moment, the planned intermission was scratched, and things got finally going at 7:20 PM in front of a packed and eager audience. 

Unlike the concerts we had attended the three previous evenings, the first piece on the program was not by Schubert, but by, logically enough for a festival named after him, Mozart. His not so well-known but undeniably commanding Violin Sonata No. 33 in E-flat Major has everything we love about Mozart’s music, including complexity, finesse, energy, wit, and savoir-faire. Having two accomplished musicians such as Capuçon and Bellow tackle it with the sort of authority that comes with a healthy dose of experience, understanding and sheer virtuosity was a true privilege. 

After Mozart’s poised Classicism came Beethoven’s exalted Romanticism with his Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor. Longer, more inventive, and certainly more turbulent that Mozart’s work, it started gently and ended tempestuously, with a thrilling wild ride in between. The musicians sounded like that had a ball with it and so did we, and so did the voluble bird that insisted on celebrating a passing sun ray by joining in during the second movement. 

The second part of the program was a set of notable short pieces for violin and piano from a wide but not totally unexpected range of composers. Debussy’s “Clair de lune”, Massenet’s “Méditation” and Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” were the evening’s big hits. Elgar’s “Salut d’amour” and Schumann’s “Romance No. 2” were two lovely contributions. And the excerpt of Morricone’s famous soundtrack for Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 Nuovo Cinema Paradiso was a nice nod to nostalgia lovers everywhere. 

Needless to say, the performance was a huge success, and after Capuçon used the onstage mike to explain to the purists that the sound had to be amplified to be heard past the third row, he bestowed upon us two unusual encores, both from movie classics, “Smile” from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and Stéphane Grappelli’s waltz from Bertrand Blier’s Les valseuses. Therefore, the evening ended on a truly magical, kind of cinematographic note, with the stage beautifully lit up in the now semi-dark forest, never mind that the temperature that had gone down and the humidity that had gone up made the puffy coat I had brought just in case more indispensable than I had planned.