The Seine Music Festival
- Nine private concerts in châteaux and churches along the Seine, including the Chapelle Royale at Versailles.
- Musicians of the highest calibre include Le Concert Spirituel, Cédric Tiberghien, The Modigliani Quartet, The Nash Ensemble, Tenebrae.
- The audience lives on a modern and comfortable river cruiser, which sails from Paris to Le Havre.
- Talks on the music by Richard Langham-Smith and on the buildings by John McNeill.
- Admission to the concerts is exclusive to those who take a package which includes practically everything.
The Seine Music Festival celebrates and explores a wide-ranging selection of the very best pieces, by French composers, both sacred and secular. The repertoire starts with the sixteenth century and progresses to the ‘Grand Siècle’ of the Sun-King, on through the French Romantics to the ‘Impressionists’, Debussy and Ravel. It ends with music by two post-war masters, Olivier Messiaen and Francis Poulenc.
Performances are in châteaux, churches and concert halls beside the River Seine or a short drive away, some of them seldom-visited architectural jewels. Ranging from the grand and splendid – the Chapelle Royale at Versailles – to small and charming, not to say decaying, châteaux, these venues have been chosen to bring out the best in the performers and the music they play. Often the music is of the same period as the building in which it is played, and sometimes there are specific historical connections.
Exclusive Access
The concerts are private and exclusive to festival participants (maximum 125) who book a package which provides not only admission to all nine performances but also accommodation on the ship, all meals, first-class Eurostar between the UK and Paris (if required), travel by river and road, and talks on music and architecture.
Talks and lectures
The spoken word is an important ingredient of the festival. There are daily talks on the music by
Richard Langham-Smith, a leading specialist on French music.
John McNeill, architectural historian, lectures on the buildings and leads some tours and walks on land.
The comfort of a river cruiser
To this exceptional artistic experience is added a further pleasure: the comfort and convenience of a
first-class river cruiser, chartered exclusively for the festival audience. The MS Viking Seine is the most comfortable passenger ship of the capacity we require on the Seine.
As both hotel and principal means of transport, the ship enables passengers to attend the concerts and visit some fine buildings in the region without having to change hotel or drive long distances. Like our other river festivals, there is little regimentation, no obligatory seating plan, no on-board entertainment and no piped music.
The Seine
Shorter than the Rhône or the Loire, the Seine is nevertheless the greatest river of France. History has made it so, with the north of the country, and Paris in particular, emerging since the High Middle Ages as the political, economic, intellectual and cultural centre of gravity.
But geography had a part to play. Rising in Burgundy and flowing northwest through the Ile de France and Normandy, it is navigable for much of its course, and tidal below Rouen.
Scenically much of the Seine is exceedingly attractive, with sweeps of green pasture and orchards, clusters of beech, lines of poplar, low hills and high chalky cliffs. There are stretches where travellers can feel transported into paintings by Pissarro, Monet, Sisley and Renoir.
The name ‘Seine’ is thought to derive from the Celtic ‘squan’ meaning curve, and the most striking characteristic of the river course downstream from Paris are those great winding loops which create narrow headlands and shelving promontories.
Patterns of settlement were largely determined by these contours, and several towns, trading posts, monasteries and castles grew above the banks of the Seine. A representative selection of these are explored during the cruise, which is an architectural as well as a musical journey.
Read about the concerts