We have very many of these all over our small country each summer. For the fifth time my husband and I spent some days at the so-called Hindsgavl Music festival. This year they celebrated the 48th of the kind. Bernard Villaume who is in charge wants to mix new upcoming stars with celebrated established classical musicians in all genres of chamber music. After the main concerts in the evenings it’s possible to hear newly written music and to meet the composers.

During the day you hear musicians exercise here and there in different rooms of the historic palace of Hindsgavl Palace. At this place our king Frederic VI with heavy heart signed the document that we had lost Norway in 1814. Hans Christian Andersen has stayed here as he usually did at the big estate buildings and enjoyed the beautiful sight over the coast “Lillebælt”.

Photos from the concert hall in the former barn and from the main building

Chiaroscuro Quartet and Cédric Tiberghien

A decoration at Hindsgavl

interior at Hindsgavl

From the garden of Hindsgavl

Interior in the old part of the palace

The palace has a gourmet restaurant and all food is produced in their kitchen using products from the garden. The forest and green areas around the palace you see wild deer.

You can live in the old part of the palace or in the former barn buildings held in completely different styles.

Many of the guests  are elderly people but I am glad to say that Bernard makes an effort to attract young people too. He let young music students stay in the park in tents to cut the price.

Leaving today I said goodbye to an elderly man who I had met before at the place. With tears in his eyes he had told me he had lost his wife a few months ago. I said I would like to meet him again next year and I saw a smile on his face. The couple had attended the festival for fifteen years and now he continues on his own. As a contrast to this I overheard a conversation where Andreas Brandelid a very talented Danish cellist told a friend that he wanted to find a babysitter because both he and his wife wanted to attend to the evening’s concert with Cédric Tiberghdien  playing two Mozart piano concerts on a hammer piano from 1800s. The sound was very soft and I imagined that the music sounded like that at Mozart’s time.

The two ensembles we heard consisted of people from different countries. It’s amazing that they play together in total harmony talking different languages outside of their playing but in music they have the same language.

Two of them you can hear here form this link. The music, Mozart Sonatas, is chosen as the CD of this week by our Danish Classical Radio. It’s the Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova and the French pianist Cédric Tiberghdien both playing on original instruments from the time of the composers’. Cédric and his colleagues played the music with no emphasis on themselves.

Photos from the garden, the hotel window and the view over the sea called Lillebælt at the end of the park

From the vegetable garden

View from our hotel window

View to the sea

From another link you can get a glimpse of the venue as the Danish News Media has made a video to give you an appetizer if any of you would like to visit next year. The festival runs from Monday to  Thursday in the first two weeks of July.

The highlight for me was to hear the soft sound of German clarinetist Sabine Meyer playing in a quintet of Mozart and an octet of Schubert. It is very special to be able to hear each instrument so clearly playing solos and together with few other instruments. Schubert was only 18 years old when he wrote the octet and Mozart was 25 years old when of these two piano concerts were written. Incredible what some people have archived at a young age. Schubert should have known have people love his music now two hundred years after he wrote it always broke and mostly ill, he never heard his great works performed.

If you would like to hear the concerts The Danish Radio transmits the concerts next week Monday and Tuesday. The concerts can be heard on demand on the DRnet Radio.