the consecration for the pianist Alexandre Kantorow and the tenor Benjamin Bernheim and Révélations au feminine

The 31st Victoires de la Musique Classique wanted to send Thursday evening to Montpellier a message of peace and hope through art. On the competition side, with Kantorow and Bernheim, two stars of the new generation were rewarded, while the conductor Marie Jacquot, the mezzo Juliette Mey and the violist Salomé Gasselin offered exclusively female Revelations.

The evening, broadcast live on Thursday February 29 from the Berlioz Corum opera house in Montpellier, ended with the radiant face of Salomé Gasselin, moved and happy to share her passion for the viola da gamba by receiving hands from another “baroque”, Philippe Jaroussky, his Victory in the category “Instrumental soloist revelation”.

The ceremony, accompanied by the Montpellier Occitanie National Orchestra conducted by the Italian Michele Spotti, was opened by the good humor and lively tone of Dance by Rossini carried by the tenor we love, the Samoan Pene Pati.

The composer Rossini, moreover, to whom we paid homage throughout my evening, as well as his compatriot Puccini: the first, born on February 29 (1792), and the second, died a hundred years ago, in 1924.

A highly applauded sequence was the powerful and moving interpretation of the aria “Vissi d’arte” by Toscaby Puccini, by the American soprano Rachel Willis Sorensen.

Hymn of peace

The evening was also strongly marked by the notes of the 1st movement of the Concerto No. 2 by Rachmaninoff played with symbolic force by the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova, a sign that the war in Ukraine remains on everyone’s minds two years after the start of the Russian invasion.

Tribute was also paid to the musicians and conductors who “worked for peace”such as Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Pablo Casals or Daniel Barenboim, underlined the master of ceremonies, Stéphane Bern, before the Bird song, a vibrant peace anthem by Pablo Casals, is sung by Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The young star cellist of the new generation of musicians across the Channel offered a moment of great emotion with the orchestra.

Another great tribute was given, on the notes of Requiem by Fauré, to the musicians who died this year, and in particular the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, the Israeli pianist Menahem Pressler and the Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who died very recently, a figure of prime importance in the transmission of French music.

The triumph of Kantorow and Bernheim

Winner of the prestigious Victoire “instrumental soloist”, Alexandre Kantorow, 26, made history by becoming, in 2019, at the age of 22, the first French winner of the Grand Prix for piano at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow , one of the most prestigious in the world. Only son of the conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the English violinist Kathryn Dean, he plays both in chamber music and in illustrious institutions such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, at Carnegie Hall or with the Orchester de Paris , under the direction of great conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Jaap van Zweden and Klaus Mäkelä. In 2020, he had already been doubly crowned at the Victoires de la Musique Classique, in two categories: “instrumental soloist” and “recording”.

For his part, the Franco-Swiss tenor Benjamin Bernheim, 38, won the title of “lyric artist”, an award he had already obtained in 2020, tied with Karine Deshayes. A late star, he wanted to throw in the towel several times. “I fought against my voice for a long time”he said four years ago. “She got tired a lot, very quickly”. However, critics praise its “sparkling” tone and high notes with “power that pins the listener to the chair”. Some compare him to the great tenor Roberto Alagna, his model, particularly because of his excellent French diction. The artist is a regular guest at the largest European opera houses, where he performs roles from the romantic repertoire. He has just played the title role in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Paris National Opera.

Revelations in the feminine

The Revelation Victory for “lyric artist” was awarded to the barely 24-year-old mezzo-soprano Juliette Mey, who had distinguished herself a little earlier in the graceful aria “Non più mesta” from The Cenerentola by Rossini. Still on the Révélations side, the “conductor” trophy went to an already experienced musician, Marie Jacquot, soon to be the first woman to conduct the prestigious Cologne radio orchestra.

The composer Florentine Mulsant receives from the hands of the actor Raphaël Personnaz, who plays Maurice Ravel in the film Bolero by Anne Fontaine (in theaters March 6) the “composer” Victory for The Song of the Sun, sonata for piano for 4 hands. Finally, the recording trophy went posthumously to pianist Nicholas Angelich, born in 1970, for the 7-CD box set “Hommage” published by Erato two years after his death, in 2022.

Complete list of Victoires de la Musique Classique 2024

Instrumental soloist victory: Alexander Kantorow, piano

Lyric artist victory: Benjamin Bernheim, tenor

Composers victory: Florentine Mulsant – The Song of the Sun, sonata for piano for 4 hands

Victory records: Nicholas Angelich: tribute – Nicholas Angelich, Quartet Ébène, Martha Argerich, Myung-Whun Chung, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchester national du Capitole de Toulouse, Tugan Sokhiev – Erato

Victory Revelation instrumental soloist: Salomé Gasselin, viola da gamba

Victoire Revelation lyrical artist: Juliette Mey, mezzo-soprano

Victory Revelation conductor: Marie Jacquot