{"id":5399,"date":"2025-09-15T15:04:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/?p=5399"},"modified":"2025-09-29T20:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T20:09:10","slug":"festival-marvao-recension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/festival-marvao-recension\/","title":{"rendered":"Festival Marv\u00e3o – a Recension"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Translation of Recension by Nicola Catto<\/h5>

Someone once said that the perfect recipe for the success of a festival (musical, but not only) involves two essential ingredients: it must take place in a location that is sufficiently isolated yet also of great beauty, whether natural or architectural. I must say that the Marv\u00e3o Festival more than satisfies both conditions: the town is located in the east of Portugal, just a few kilometers from the Spanish border, in the district of Portalegre, about two and a half hours by car from Lisbon, perched over 800 meters high on a small mountain: few inhabitants in the summer, and very few (99, I was told) in the winter.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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But in Marv\u00e3o there is one indispensable condition for music, which in 2014 convinced the renowned German violinist and conductor Christoph Poppen, together with his wife, the even more famous soprano Juliane Banse, to create from scratch an annual music event: it began, as often happens, with a weekend of just a few concerts involving some friends, gradually growing into the much more ambitious program of this eleventh edition, entirely dedicated to chamber music (though last year they even ventured into opera, with a full performance of Mozart\u2019s The Abduction from the Seraglio).<\/span><\/p>

Marv\u00e3o is dominated by an Arab-era castle, which hosts the most important concerts in its courtyard (the evening ones) and boasts a marvelous cistern, originally used for rainwater storage (allowing castle inhabitants a six-month autonomy during sieges) and today hosting late-night concerts with incredibly generous and harmonious acoustics. I listened to Haydn\u2019s The Seven Last Words, in the string quartet version, and it was one of those rare cases where everything felt \u201cright,\u201d from the quality of the four musicians (Poppen himself with Muriel Cantoreggi, Adrien La Marca, and Bruno Philippe) to the atmosphere created between them and the large audience.<\/span><\/p>

The festival creates real communities: that of the spectators, coming from all over Europe (you really have to choose to come to Marv\u00e3o\u2014it\u2019s not a place you happen upon by chance!) and, loyal over the years, providing significant financial support through a network of donors; and that of the artists, who perform for symbolic fees and, staying for many days (the festival ran from July 18 to 27), allow programs including pieces rarely heard, often for practical reasons. For example, the selection from Brahms\u2019 Liebeslieder-Walzer, with its ensemble of two pianists and four singers, or the presence in residence of the excellent Arod Quartet, performing daily.<\/span><\/p>

Notable names were present: the duo formed by Sunwook Kim (well-known pianist, winner of the 2006 Leeds Competition) and his wife Clara-Jumi Kang covered works from Franck\u2019s Sonata to the Quintet, from Chausson\u2019s Po\u00e8me to his Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, always ensuring technical brilliance and\u2014especially for her\u2014a generous and intense approach.<\/span><\/p>

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This year\u2019s edition (15,000 tickets sold, 100 artists from 20 countries, 35 concerts) was characterized by almost all concerts being monographic: for instance, a rare \u201call Chausson\u201d program (Po\u00e8me, the Seven M\u00e9lodies Op. 2, La Chanson perp\u00e9tuelle, and the aforementioned Concerto) followed by \u201call Franck\u201d and \u201call Beethoven,\u201d with festival-worthy pieces such as the Septet and the Piano and Winds Quintet Op. 16.<\/span><\/p>

Not only the castle, however: the Church of the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Estrela, large but acoustically diffuse, and the more intimate Church of S\u00e3o Tiago were other concert venues. In the latter, I heard an unusually abundant (perhaps even excessive) \u201call Prokofiev\u201d program: the Overture on Hebrew Themes, the Flute Sonata (with excellent soloist S\u00f3nia Pais), some Songs on Russian texts with the fine Belarusian baritone Nikolay Borchev, and the First Violin Sonata. On the same day, at the same place, late in the evening, we concluded with the moving Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Messiaen, whose prophetic yet luminous notes seemed to perfectly match the location and our turbulent times (and Hor\u00e1cio Ferreira on clarinet was outstanding!).<\/span><\/p>

As is typical in festivals of this type, concerts are numerous, interactions between artists rather occasional, and rehearsal time limited; results could therefore be surprisingly good or, in other cases, less convincing, with caution prevailing. For example, it was not a good idea to program Brahms\u2019 Quintet in the Joachim version, which replaces the clarinet with a viola\u2014a version requiring a balance calculation impossible to achieve in a short outdoor rehearsal. But generally, the quality of the individual musicians and their enthusiasm ensured a truly excellent artistic result.<\/span><\/p>

I cannot forget the concerts for children (with the wonderful violinist Kevin Zhu, Paganini winner and brilliant entertainer) and for the elderly: a sign of social sensitivity beyond the purely artistic. As I have written many times, there are many\u2014indeed, too many\u2014summer festivals (especially in Italy): what really makes the difference are ideas, quality, and the ability to create an inclusive project with a long-term vision, not just artistic. This is why Marv\u00e3o can still grow\u2014a hope I sincerely share.<\/span><\/p>

by Nicola Catto<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Translation of Recension by Nicola Catto Someone once said that the perfect recipe for the success of a festival (musical, but not only) involves two essential ingredients: it must take place in a location that is sufficiently isolated yet also of great beauty, whether natural or architectural. I must say that the Marv\u00e3o Festival more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5399"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6341,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5399\/revisions\/6341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoph-poppen.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}