The Bourgie Hall will launch in the 2024-2025 season the presentation of the complete songs of Franz Schubert. The project will be the common thread for the seasons to come until 2028, the year of the bicentenary of the Austrian composer’s death.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is the author of 600 melodies or lieder, a unique mass in the history of music. It was a dream project for the new management of the Bourgie room After the end of the entire Cantatas by Bach, which marked the mandate of Isolde Lagacé while giving the institution a certain image in the way of approaching the repertoire.
A residence
“One of our first thoughts was to ask ourselves how to continue this idea after Bach. The cantatas have entered people’s imagination,” says the general director, Caroline Louis, who notes: “There was a phenomenon of recurrence, on Sundays at 2:30 p.m., with the public singing at the end. We cannot reproduce that with Schubert. We are therefore going to approach things creatively, delve into the corpus, bring it to life today to introduce Schubert from several angles. »
In her discussions with the public, the general director of the Bourgie Hall saw the listeners’ interest in “digging deeply into a project, to the point of being inhabited by it”. “After eight years, regulars have become experts in Bach cantatas! This is a bit of what we want to create with Schubert,” notes Caroline Louis. “We will work on education, connecting with the public, with conferences, meetings, content, tools. »
But everyone has their own pace. Between seven and ten concerts per year will be devoted to the project. “We will carefully observe the first year before finalizing the number,” says artistic director Olivier Godin. He wants to avoid only presenting complete recitals of melodies. There will also be Schubert in relation with other composers, lieder with choirs, with instruments or ensembles, orchestrated lieder…
“We are going to commission composers to respond to certain texts by Heine, Schiller or Goethe or to an important cycle or song. We have also placed other Schubertian repertoires in the season: the Quintet “The Trout” or the last three Piano Sonatas,” explains Olivier Godin.
“There are a lot of things, a bit as if Schubert was in residence at Bourgie Hall for several years. While not going overboard, we want to introduce people to the world of Schubert and the literary world of Schubert’s poets. »
Another image
“Bach embodied the room for several years, and we had the image of a baroque room. Schubert is an interesting character, because he embodies what we want to do with the stage in the coming years. There is chamber music, the voice, the piano,” notes Caroline Louis, praising the “proximity” of this repertoire.
“There is something interesting in having this image of Schubert which is associated with the image of the room for several years”, analyzes the director, echoed by Olivier Godin: “And there is a story that tell us these poems, these works, which is a human story, less religious than in Bach, but spiritual in its humanity. It will speak to the public in a world that is asking a lot of questions. »
The management of the venue plans to retain the public without necessarily bringing them to all the concerts obviously: “We hear that the subscription does not work. But it depends on the organization, the public, the product. For us, it works well, because we have made it more flexible, and the share of customers who come to several concerts is significant,” says Caroline Louis, who is delighted with attendance returning to 90% of pre-pandemic levels. but with, in part, another audience.
“We have doubled the presence of young people”, a result that management attributes to expanded programming, adapted communication, canvassing with museums and universities, the development of master classes, and a stable and reasonable pricing policy. as well as word of mouth.
Ema Nikolovska, the Agora Orchestra and Nicolas Ellis will inaugurate at the same time, on September 25, the season and the Schubert project, whose headliners will be, for year I, Benjamin Appl and Ian Bostridge. During this 2024-2025 season, which will be revealed on Tuesday, we will notably find the names of Christian Gerhaher, Leonidas Kavakos, Christophe Rousset et les Talens lyriques, Les Tallis Scholars, Stile Antico (finally!), Benedetto Lupo and Kirill Gerstein. We will witness the return of Francine Kay and the debut of Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt.
