Festival de La Roque-d'Anthéron

The Festival de La Roque-d'Anthéron is an international piano festival, founded on 10 August 1981 by Paul Onoratini (1920–2010[1]), then mayor of La Roque-d'Anthéron and René Martin [fr], then an intern at the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs, seeking to create a piano festival.

Held in the open air every summer in the park of the Château de Florans, it is now recognised as one of the major musical events in Europe.

The invited artists include Martha Argerich, Nelson Freire, Boris Berezovsky, Youri Egorov, Evgeny Kissin, Zhu Xiao-Mei, François-Frédéric Guy, Claire Désert, Nikolai Lugansky, Eliso Virsaladze, Valentina Igoshina, Brigitte Engerer,[6] Arcadi Volodos, Anne Queffélec, Alexandre Tharaud, Marie-Josèphe Jude, Hélène Grimaud, Mauricio Vallina, come regularly to perform at this festival.

Although the festival is centered on the piano, other instrumentalists sometimes join the stage, in orchestra formations such as the Concerto Köln and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, or in chamber formation (Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Trio Wanderer...), as well as various baroques ensembles, jazz and electronic music composers...

The "ensembles in residence" are small chamber music ensembles made up of young musicians who came to La Roque-d'Anthéron to study during the masterclasses of the great masters of the piano.