Concert in Ollioules

Wednesday 6 August 2025 – 9 PM
Ollioules

The Festival du Haut-Var travels to the coast for one evening before the closThe Festival du Haut-Var takes to the coast for one evening before the closing concert, offering a glimpse of its repertoire in the town of Ollioules. You'll be able to hear works from the Festival's 4 concerts, featuring the trio in many different forms.

First of all, Mozart's Trio des Quilles blends the sounds of clarinet, viola and piano, with a lightness and gaiety tinged with melancholy that only Mozart can convey. The composer is said to have been inspired to write this work by a game of skittles, which gives this innovative trio its name.

The programme continues with a string trio, a formation unfortunately too often overshadowed by the string quartet. This piece, still in Franz Schubert's very classical period, is unfinished, as is the Austrian composer's well-known symphony. In just two movements, Schubert manages to express his full range of emotions, from joy and lightness to burgeoning romantic torment, before ending with a sublime, but all too brief, slow movement of enveloping gentleness.

To round off this evening in Ollioules, the clarinet and piano will be joined this time by a cello to perform the well-known trio by Johannes Brahms. This work was written by the German composer at the very end of his life, when he had decided not to write any more. His meeting with the virtuoso clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld led him to reconsider his decision and, much to our delight, he returned to writing several masterpieces for the clarinet: two sonatas, a quintet and this trio.