Opening concert of the 44th Pau Casals International Music Festival (FIMPC2025 - I)
octubre 28, 2025
This year, the festival's subtitle was “The
Fruit of Friendship”, because it wanted to show the long and fruitful musical
and personal friendship between Pablo Casals and five great musicians:
.
Eugene
Istomin (1925 – 2003), Pianist
Isaac
Stern (1920 – 2003), Violinist
Rudolf
Serkin (1903 – 1991), Pianist
Mieczysław
Horsowski[1]
(1892 – 1993), Pianist
Alexander
Schneider (1908 – 1993), Violinist
They had another experience in common:
suffering exile.
[1] radiosefard.com in a post on 16 August 2023, he literally titled "Myeczyslaw Horszowski,
Pau Casals’ pianist friend" based on the correspondence between Józef Wittlin
(1896 – 1976), novelist, poet, and translator, and Horszowski.
-
A
festival brimming with young talents and true legends of classical music
Behind the magnificent experience of
enjoying the festival, with its spectacular programme, lies the constant work
of the team at the Fundació Pau Casals: Jordi Pardo, Managing Director, Núria
Ballester, Director of the Pau Casals Museum, and Bernard Meillat, Musical
Advisor to the Foundation and Artistic Director of the Festival.
The festival demonstrates high quality and
enormous respect for the values of Pau Casals, thanks to the commitment of the
festival team to making this event a reality.
The programme text, signed by Bernard
Meillat, shows the elegance and solidity with which Pau Casals’ human and
musical legacy is handled
In addition, everyone on the team,
regardless of their position or responsibilities, made the public feel at home.
To everyone working on this project,
congratulations and support to continue preparing the next festival with the
same level of excellence.
Opening concert
Friday,
11 July – Pau Casals Auditorium
Friendship as inspiration
This was the
title of the opening concert. Luka Coetzee, cello and Frank Braley, piano, were
responsible for opening the festival.
The programme
Franz Schubert
(1797 – 1828) Arpeggione[1]
Sonata, D 821
Benjamin
Britten (1913 – 1976) Sonata for Cello and Piano,
Op. 65
Felix
Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847) Sonata for Cello and
Piano No 2, Op. 58
As an encore they
played works by
Gaspar Cassadó
(1897 – 1966)
Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)
Edward Elgar
(1857 – 1934)
The opening
concert was a preview of the rest of the festival’s concerts in terms of
quality, as quality is a hallmark of this festival. Variety was guaranteed by
the different visions of each artist who performed.
The selection of
pieces for the opening concert allowed the audience to enjoy the virtuosity and
musical energy of the performers.
The performers
[Luka Coetzee] “…tonally,
technically and musically superb”
Fanfarre Magazine
Luka Coetzee
(2004) won First Prize at the 2022 Pau Casals
Competition, becoming a leading performer for classical music lovers in El
Vendrell. That same year, she won the Johansen International Competition in
Washington. In addition, in 2023, she also won First Prize at the Paulo Cello
Competition in Helsinki, which comes with a prize of €20,000.
It may seem
surprising, but this wonderful artist took her first cello lesson at the age of
one, with Christine Bootland as her teacher. She made her debut in 2015, at the
age of eleven, with the Calgary Civic Symphony.
She graduated from the Advanced Performance Programme at Mount Royal
University Conservatory in Canada, where she was mentored by pianist Sussane
Ruberg-Gordon. She also received a scholarship from the Pau Casals Foundation
and studied at the Kronberg Academy in Germany with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt
(1971). Luka Coetzee also plays the piano, having studied this subject at the
Royal Conservatory of Music ARCT in Toronto, where she graduated with top
honours under the guidance of Derek Chiu (Derek Zhi Gyang Chiu).
Coetzee has
performed at the Elbphilarmonie in Hamburg, the Berlin Philharmonic, the
Rheingau Music Festival and the Woordfees Festival in Stellenbosch, South
Africa, among others.
Luka Coetzee has
recorded a CD featuring Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No3 in A major, Op 69, and
Violin Sonata No 9 in A Major, Op 47 ‘Kreutzer’, the latter arranged for cello
and strings by Paul Struck. The disc was produced for Naxos.
Coetzee plays a
1763 Ferdinando Gagliano cello, transferred by the Hochshule für Musik Franz
Liszt in Weimar. She also plays a Giuseppe Guarneri (‘filius Andrea’) cello
from between 1712 and 1715, transferred by Canimex Inc., Drummondville, Quebec
(Canada).
Frank Braley
(1968) began learning piano at the age of four and
performed for first time at six with the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1991, Braley won First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium[1],
as well as the Audience Prize. As a soloist, he performs with great artists
such a Maria João
Pires, Agustín Dumay, Emmanuel Pahud, Renaud Capuçon and Gautier Capuçon. He
has recorded more than twenty albums. Between 2014 and 2019, he was musical
director of the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia. He has been a professor at
the Paris Conservatoire since 2011.
[1] This international competition is
one of the most demanding and renowned. It was created in 1937 by Queen
Elisabeth of Belgium, with the collaboration of Eugène Ysaÿe. In fact, the 1937
and 1938 editions were called the ‘Eugène Ysaÿe Competition”. The current name
originated in 1951. Currently, the competition is held in the specialities of
violin, cello, piano and singing. Each year, one of the specialities is
announced. This year 2025, it was piano; in 2026 it will be cello, in 2027
singing, in 2028 violin and in 2029, piano. Marta Casals Istomin was a member
of the jury for the 2017 cello competition.
In this video, Frank Braley performs Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, in a recording from 1991, which corresponds to his participation in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium.
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