The 79th Besançon International Music Festival opens with 24 hours of free concerts

The 79th Besançon International Music Festival, which this year honors major symphony orchestras such as the Bergen Philharmonic of Norway and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, opens Friday until September 20, with an inaugural 24 hours of free concerts.

Around thirty concerts are scheduled in Besançon and Franche-Comté, with classical (Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Sibelius), jazz and world music. The prestigious international competition for young conductors, which takes place every two years, will not be held this year. “The strong focus of the festival, since 1948, has always been symphonic music,” indicates Jean-Michel Mathé, director of the event which claims “continuity in international excellence” and expects some 14,000 spectators. The major French, German, Belgian or Swiss groups will thus perform “hits, such as Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but also much less well-known opuses,” he specifies.

This year, the “star orchestra” will be that of Bergen, Norway, conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk and accompanied by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, “a very great soloist,” he emphasizes. Chamber and vocal music also retains a special place, notably with the Goldberg Trio and the Zaïde Quartet.

The festival also continues its commitment to the creation of contemporary music with the composer Régis Campo, who is finishing his second and final year of residency in the Comtoise capital. He will present, among other things, the Zoo Circus project, a sequel to Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals with "lots of weird critters", aimed at families, and his piece Street Art, at the heart of a show which mixes contemporary music, "Free-running" and video.

The festival has reinvented its opening sequence: exit the traditional opening symphony concert and make way for 24 hours of free music, in six concerts of great diversity, in emblematic places of Besançon.