Word: perpignan
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...night of St. Jean's Eve, June 23, is the occasion in France of fireworks, bonfires and merrymaking. In bustling Perpignan, a city of 70,000 near the Spanish border, the holiday was celebrated as usual last year. But not everyone was amused. Jean Amiel, 37, who taught English at the local lycée, rushed to quiet his five-year-old daughter when she awoke crying, after youngsters had slipped firecrackers through the letter slot in Amiel's door and they exploded in the hall. He went to the open window, glimpsed five boys and two girls...
Casds Festival at Perpignan, Vol. I (Perpignan Festival Orchestra conducted by Pablo Casals; Columbia, 4 LPs). The great cellist is heard here as a Mozart conductor (he plays a Haydn cello Adagio on a personally inscribed fifth disk for purchasers of the complete album), shows that it is still possible to make such old veterans as Eine kleine Nachtmusik sound daisy-fresh. The orchestra is the fervent group that gathered around the Master in 1951; soloists include Violinist Erica Morini, Oboist Marcel Tabuteau...
When Cellist Pablo Casals staged a Bach festival in the French Pyrenees town of Prades last year, he did not so much come out of retirement as invite others to join him in it. Last week, playing in the airy courtyard of Perpignan's 13th Century Palace of the Kings of Majorca, Casals was really out in the open. He made a 30-mile move from Prades to more accessible Perpignan; fellow musicians and some 2,000 music lovers made global pilgrimages to hear...
...open-air festival courtyard raised special problems. Perpignan's tramontane, a strong, cold wind that sweeps along the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean, kept the orchestra grabbing for their music, finally made them clip the sheets to the racks with clothespins. The wind also played havoc with the acoustics, made the most desirable spots those on a chairless balcony above the platform. Astute music lovers sacrificed comfort, sat on the balcony floor, their feet dangling over the edge. At the second night's concert, the tramontane brought an unseasonable downpour that soaked the motionless audience to the skin before...
Most of those who flocked to Perpignan thought little of the discomfort. Said Soprano Jennie Tourel, who gave stirring performances of Mozart and Bach arias: "Casals literally radiates music. He just makes you sing." Said Pianist Rudolf Serkin, whose Beethoven and Bach sonatas with Casals were festival high points: "Without looking at him you feel all his intentions. We understand each other like an old happily married couple...