Orchestre des jeunes de la Méditerranée

A hub that since the dawn of time has allowed people and ideas to travel, what has always made the Mediterranean special is its ability to create connections. Despite wars, the borders of its multidimensional culture have always been porous enough to let the noise of the world through. For the many conductors who have been invited over the past thirty years to conduct the youth of this inner continent, throbbing heart of the project of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, this strength is immediately visible. They feel it through the commitment and the jubilation with which those semi-professional musicians play the greatest works of the repertoire at the highest level. To bring differences together in celebration is also what motivates this programme, whose main works marry romantic and modern music. The first, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major, ends with a long lyrical poem for soprano, The Heavenly Life. The second, Ana Sokolović's Concerto for Orchestra, borrows from the carefully thought-out music of Beethoven and from the immediate pleasure of Rossini's to reinvent, in a direct and sophisticated style, the popular rhythms that are all too often neglected in learned compositions.

Within the Academy of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra (Orchestre des Jeunes de la Méditerranée, or OJM) offers talented young musicians from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region and the Mediterranean the opportunity to play professionally as an orchestra. For the past thirty years, the OJM has made creation and intercultural exchange the heart of its programmes, and focused on the transmission of the pleasure of performing the symphonic repertoire. Every year, about a hundred Mediterranean youths (from about twenty different countries) take part in the OJM sessions, benefitting from high-level training as well as from the presence of prestigious artists-in-residence at the Festival d'Aix. In 2015, the OJM offers three different sessions: one focusing on symphonic practice, conducted by Carlo Rizzi with the help of musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra; another dedicated to intercultural collective composition, with Fabrizio Cassol; and a session of professional integration with the musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra, with the creation of an opera for children conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Regularly invited by the New York Metropolitan Opera and London's Covent Garden, Carlo Rizzi began his career in Milan, where he served as assistant conductor at La Scala. Famous for the perceptiveness and integrity of his musicality as much as for the psychological depth of his interpretations, Carlos Rizzi has conducted about a hundred operas by Bellini, Donizetti, Cimarosa, etc. Beyond the Italian repertoire, he has notably recorded Gounod's Faust and Janáček's Kátia Kabanová.

Austrian composer Gustav Mahler studied music until 1878, mostly in Vienna, before beginning an intense career as a conductor, then as an artistic director in Prague, Budapest, and Vienna. An heir to Beethoven and Brahms's symphonic tradition, which he married to the modernity of Wagner and Bruckner, Mahler's symphonies work as actual tales, most often accompanied by choruses or soloists, as in The Song of the Earth (1908). His work was a precursor to atonality. His tenth symphony remains unfinished.

Ana Sokolović first studied classical ballet and theatre before moving on to music. She learned composition in her native country, what is now known as Serbia, under Dušan Radić and Zoran Erić. In 1992, she moved to Montreal, where she continued her training with José Evangelista, before teaching composition. A prolific artist, she multiplies the forms her music takes, often inspired by the festive and asymmetrical rhythms of Balkan folklore. Her latest opera, Svadba, for six a cappella female voices, will be produced this summer at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

The event will open with Giuseppe Verdi's I vespri siciliani; The composer's masterpiece was chosen by conductor Carlo Rizzi to open the night.

Music by Gustav Mahler & Ana Sokolovič

direction Carlo Rizzi 
with soprano Ying Fang
and 80 young international musicians

Production Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 
With the support of la Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur