
It is an exceptional musical evening which the city of Villers-Cotterêts in collaboration with the Community of Communes Retz-en-Valois and theADAMA associationoffers this Saturday, January 18 with a Concert free of chargeorchestra of Picardy. This concert is part of the program for 40 years of musical training. Jean-Jacques Thomas, its president, also the mayor of Hirson, looks back on this orchestra: “Not only has it not aged a bit, but for its forty years, the Orchester de Picardie is playing the youth card . With Chloé Van Hoorde, its new General Director, and Johanna Malangré, its Musical Director, taking on colors, the National Orchestra is broadening its international horizons. Cooperation initiated with the Dortmund Chorakademie; with the Munich and Swedish chamber orchestras, tomorrow, in cross-border programs with Germany and Belgium, confirm this essential openness. »
Prestigious soloists
Jean-Jacques Thomas continues his presentation of the orchestra: “The presence within the Orchester de Picardie of prestigious soloists as well as the participation in the international festivals of Beauvais, Lille, Laon, des Forêts or Saint-Riquier demonstrates that it is, not only, capable of moving the lines while irrigating the territory of Hauts-de-France by cooperating with the smaller venues as with its big brother the Orchester National de Lille. Music without borders. »
The concert program
Music lovers present at the Germain Thibaut gymnasium will be able to listen to a rich program including the violinist Geneviève Laurenceau: It will begin with the composer Carl Maria von Weber and his musical piece Der Freischütz (The Franc-tireur). Then will come the violin concerto by Guirne Creith. Finally, this concert will end with the famous 9th New World Symphony by Antonín Dvořák. The orchestra will be under the direction of David Niemann.
Geneviève Laurenceau offers us a splendid discovery with the Violin Concerto in G minor by the English composer Guirne Creith (1907-1996). The work, created in the 1930s and completely forgotten since, enchants with its incandescent solo part and the sumptuousness of its post-romantic language. Worthy of being among the great concertos of the first 20th century, it naturally finds its place alongside symphonic “musts” such as the exhilarating Freischütz Overture (1821) or the New World Symphony.
Composed in 1892, during Dvořák’s stay in the United States, the Symphony No. 9 in E-minor belongs, through its language, to the Slavic romanticism of the end of the 19th century and is no less “Czech” than all the other works of the composer. His “Americanisms” fit happily into Dvořák’s usual popular inspiration, broadened and enlivened by the wonder he felt at the sight of the immense spaces of North America.
Info: Saturday January 18, 2025 at 8 p.m. at the Gymnase Germain Thibaut. Free entry. Reservation: culture@mairie-villerscotterets.fr or by telephone on 03 23 96 55 02.