We might all love Paris in the springtime, but it's not the only French city worthy of your affections in April. Down in the sunny south is beautiful Aix-en-Provence, where golden light bathes the streets and squares, which are lined with elegant buildings, shaded by plane trees and freshened by fountains. When I arrive just before Easter, the sun is already deliciously warm, a welcome change from the cooler UK.
The city is only a half-hour drive from Marseilles airport, but as I saunter, happily half-lost, following my nose, around the cobbled streets of the old medieval heart of Aix, it feels like I've stepped into a different world. It's busy with tourists, and the many shops selling fragrant local lavender are doing a roaring trade, but it's easy enough to slip down a side street and find a quiet café for a coffee.
Even just a few days in Aix-en-Provence is a tonic. The sunshine warms body and soul. It's one of the reasons that violinist Renaud Capuçon loves the place, so much so that he co-founded a music festival here.
He's now its artistic director.
Bu hikaye BBC Music Magazine dergisinin April 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye BBC Music Magazine dergisinin April 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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FESTIVAL GUIDE 2024
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Music to die for
From wrathful Verdi to ethereal Fauré, there are many different ways to compose a Requiem, as Jeremy Pound discovers
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From Vivaldi to Messiaen, composers have often been inspired by birdsong. But accurately mimicking chirrups and tweets in music is far more difficult than it sounds, finds Tom Stewart
THE BIG 400!
BBC Music Magazine has reached its 400th issue! To celebrate, we look back over eight milestone issues since the very firstin 1992
Northern light
From her first piano lesson, composer Errollyn Wallen has lived and breathed music; and though inspired by a range of styles, her composing is a deeply personal expression, as she tells Kate Wakeling
Felix Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor
Jo Talbot celebrates the Mozart of the 19th century’ as she searches out the finest recordings of this masterful work for piano, violin and cello
Antonio Salieri
Forget the hate-filled murderer of Mozart, says Alexandra Wilson; the real Salieri was an opera composer of considerable standing
Aix-en-Provence France
Rebecca Franks breathes in the spring air in the popular southern city, where the music making sparkles and the sun always shines
Composing is like breathing. It's just something I do, like a hobby, really...or an addiction
The world's most performed classical composer, a small, black-suited figure with a mop of white hair and mutton-chop whiskers, stands on the huge Brucknerhaus stage, almost invisible among the sea of musicians.