For its 5th edition, the Les Ondes music festival invites you to discover The Curious Bards, a baroque and Scandinavian music group, as well as a piano battle inspired by a historic duel and refereed by Vincent Veillon. To see from June 5 to 7 in Monthey (VS).
If pianist and composer Beatrice Berrut chose to set up a classical music festival in Monthey in 2022, it is to share her love of music and spread a little light in the world. This is the genesis of the Les Ondes festival which, in a few years, has grown to a certain extent by doubling its number of spectators.
Battle royale
For its 5th edition, the Les Ondes festival has decided to program a piano battle inspired by a historic duel between Liszt and Thalberg. In 1837, these two talented pianists confronted each other in a Parisian salon with on one side a flamboyant Hungarian and on the other an Austrian with impeccable playing.
“The goal of this piano battle was to show that classical concerts were not something as sclerotic, ritualized and polite as what we know today,” explains Beatrice Berrut in the Vertigo show on June 2. Before adding mischievously: “It’s ultimately very recent, this ritual which scares everyone, including the musicians. I guarantee you that when the room doesn’t make any noise, when you hear a cough and then you hear your first steps on the stage before the first applause, it’s horrible”.
>> Listen to the interview with Beatrice Berrut in Vertigo:
Other joys
A north wind will blow near the Mangettes de Monthey pavilion on Friday evening with the arrival of the French group The Curious Bards. Since 2015, these five musicians from the baroque world have explored the traditional music of the 18th and 19th centuries from Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia.
Entitled ‘Music Day with Friends’, Sunday will be musically rich with the arrival of a Danish string quartet, a Valais brass ensemble and a trio reinventing the codes of the classical and jazz repertoire. To attract the public, Beatrice Berrut confides that we must multiply experiences and desecrate classical music: “We can come dressed in shorts, in schlaps, we can applaud during the movements. We even have musicians who have played in shorts, and that is our little victory”.
Comments collected by Pierre Philippe Cadert
Adaptation web: Sarah Clément
Festival Les Ondes, Monthey (VS), from June 5 to 7, 2026.
