This is the DNA of the Nantes festival, to make classical music known and accessible to all. And sometimes in unusual places. As in the tramway, where two pianists gave an astonishing recital, to the delight of travellers.
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A concert in a tram train, the image is surprising. Yet it is this unusual place that pianists Manuel Vieillard and David Salmon of the Geister Duo have been chosen to set up their keyboards for a recital of works by Schubert in the spotlight of the festival this year. A concert that somewhat surprised travellers, delighted with this enchanted interlude. “It’s a very nice idea, it’s very nice“, rejoices a passenger. “Usually there isn’t too much atmosphere on the tram, so that’s fine. It’s not at all what I listen to, but from time to time, like there, it feels good“, adds a young woman.
This is the theme of this 2022 edition dedicated to the Austrian composer, an emblematic figure of German romantic music. So, Manuel Vieillard and David Salmon decided to make him take the tram for the time of a recital. A first for these two young pianists, more accustomed to performing on the stage of classical performance halls. “It’s funny, actually it moves a little in all directions, and the piano shifts under our fingers. Unlike usual, it’s a little more difficult to manage. And then there are the people watching us from the other platform and wondering what we are doing. Well we’re playing in a tram, there you go, Schubert“laughs David Salmon.
A first also for Vincent Morin-Desevedavy, who provides the instruments for the Folle Journée, and who had to find a place for the piano in this cramped space with his teams: “Maybe tram passengers would have wanted to learn to play the piano. This is how vocations are born, and this is why we support the festivals, and in particular the Folle Journée“.
And that is indeed the ambition of La Folle Journée, of which this is the 28th edition this year: to make classical music accessible and known to a wide audience with concerts lasting an average of forty-five minutes, offered at attractive prices. And each year, several thousand places are reserved for schoolchildren.