Sandrine Piau Psophos Quartet

Once again this year, the Promenades Musicales du Pays d'Auge festival kicks off at Les Franciscaines. Following last year's masterly recital by pianist Aline Piboule, the festival will feature soprano Sandrine Piau, Lyric Artist of the Year at the 2009 Victoires de la Musique awards.

In 2025, she will record an album devoted to Schubert with the Psophos Quartet. And Schubert's vague à l'âme has never been heard like this. The rhythm of the funereal cavalcades calms down, the illness of unattainable desire seems convalescent - one would forget the shadows in the undergrowth of the Psophos Quartet, where Sandrine Piau's amber voice filters through. She is one of our great sopranos, from angelic Baroque to the Mozart of the flesh, where she excels. With Jacques Gandard's arrangements, she says she caresses Schubert "between the horsehair of the bows and the grain of the voice". The soothing emotion of this music - seemingly so simple, yet as contrasted as life itself - flows between the strings like aquatic plants blooming freely in the current, between roots and stones, between sorrow and consolation.