Cour d'Honneur Palais Princier de Monaco - photo © Press Office of the Prince's Palace of Monaco

Classical

A Summer of Great Concerts Awaits at Monaco’s Palais Princier

GILLY LLOYD13 May, 20266 Mins read497

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The annual Concerts au Palais Princier take place from the 9th July to 6th August, 2026 in the Cour d’Honneur of the palace in Monaco.

This year celebrates 75 years since Prince Rainier III re-established the Concerts au Palais Princier in 1951. It also sees the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra celebrate 170 years at the heart of music, having been founded in 1856.

The concerts start on the 9th July with the Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan leading the Orchestra. Philippe Jordan was Music Director of the Opéra national de Paris between 2009 and 2021, and has been Music Director of the Wiener Staatsoper since September 2020. He leads the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic in the first of the Concerts at the Prince’s Palace in Mahler’s Symphony No 5 in C-sharp minor.

^{Video via Adagietto on YouTube}

Audiences will know the Adagietto from the Symphony well, particularly as it was used in Visconti’s Death in Venice starring Dirk Bogarde, and the Symphony is commonly thought to have been a love letter to Mahler’s wife Alma. Mahler himself however is quoted as saying that “There is nothing romantic or mystical about it; it is simply an expression of incredible energy. It is a human being in the full light of day, in the prime of his life”, when in fact he was going through a difficult time in his life with serious health problems and artistic quarrels with his orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic.

Simone Young leads the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic in a performance of works by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Mozart in the next concert on 12th July. The cellist Pablo Ferrández – who is artist in residence for the current season – plays the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor. The composer’s last notable work, the concerto, was composed in the aftermath of the First World War, and is for the most part contemplative and elegiac.

^{Video via hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony on YouTube}

The programme opens with Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is reflective of the fun and games depicted in Shakespeare’s play, and ends with the last symphony written by Mozart, his Symphony No 41 in C major K551. This Symphony was written in August 1788, and is known as ‘Jupiter’ – a name which did not emanate from Mozart himself, but was probably named by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, the English impresario who had commissioned Haydn’s last twelve symphonies.

Pianist Martha Argerich is the soloist in the concert on 26th July. She plays the Piano Concerto in C major by Prokofiev, whom she lists as one of her favourite composers. Prokofiev was a virtuoso pianist whose musical style was based on the Russian romantic tradition. He wrote five piano concertos, but only one of them, the Third, is often played. The concerto is distinctive because of the pre-echoes of his Romeo and Juliet ballet score of 1935 and 1936.

^{Video via SYMPHONY S.O.N.G on YouTube}

The programme, conducted by Charles Dutoit, also features music by Manuel de Falla – the Interlude and Dance from La Vida breve – an opera which tells of the ill-fated love affair between Paco and Salud, and the Ballet Suites Nos 1 and 2 from The Three-Cornered Hat.

During the First World War, Serge Diaghilev, with his Ballets Russes, became a favourite of King Alfonso XIII. Diaghilev discussed several potential projects with de Falla, settling on an adaptation of the 19th-century writer Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s comic novella El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat). Alarcón’s novella contains a confusing amount of incident, but the central narrative follows the traditional characters of a jealous miller, his beautiful young wife, and a lecherous local magistrate, whose position was symbolised by his three-cornered hat.

^{Video via jeuseus on YouTube}

Slovak conductor Juraj Valčuha leads the Philharmonic in the concert on 30th July. The performance features violinist Sayaka Shoji, of whom Gramophone magazine writes: “Shoji isn’t merely a superb technician, she’s a deeply engaging performer who punches above her weight.” She plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, written in 1904 and revised by the composer in 1905. It is the only concerto Sibelius wrote, and is considered to be one of the most challenging in the repertoire.

The programme opens with Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, an operetta based on the 1759 novella of the book by Voltaire. It closes with excerpts from Prokofiev’s Cinderella Ballet Suites. The Cinderella score is gorgeous and often overlooked, but it certainly has a place in Prokofiev’s repertoire of ballet music.

Hungarian conductor Martin Rajna has been principal conductor at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest since 2023. He leads the Orchestra on 2nd August in a programme of music by Beethoven – his Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor Op 37 – and Dvořák’s Symphony No 8 in G major Op 88.

^{Video via Christian Reimeir on YouTube}

The Beethoven work features Hungarian pianist Zoltan Fejérvári, who has performed as soloist with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Hungarian National Orchestra, Verbier Chamber Orchestra and Concerto Budapest. Gramophone magazine describes Fejérvári as “… a deeply communicative artist who combines an imperturbable yet magisterial command of his instrument with impeccable musicality. Those who have yet to hear him are in for a rare treat.”

Beethoven began sketching the concerto as early as 1797, but did most of the work during 1800. However, he did not add the finishing touches until he was preparing for a concert in April 1803 (in which he was the soloist), and the piano part was not even completely written out for that performance. The composer improvised a cadenza that evening but wrote one out later.

Antonín Dvořák wrote his Eighth Symphony in the summer and early autumn of 1889 mainly at his summer residence in Vysoká, the environment in which he was most at ease, and which seemed to be reflected in the overall atmosphere of the work. It is filled with his love of natural beauty and for Czech and Slavic folk music.

Kazuki Yamada is Artistic and Music Director of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, also Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and for the 2026/2027 season is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. He leads the Orchestra in the final programme of these Concerts at the Prince’s Palace on 6th August.

^{Video via ARD Klassik on YouTube}

French pianist Alexandre Kantorow has been described by Gramophone as a “fire-breathing virtuoso with a poetic charm” and by Fanfare as “Liszt reincarnated”. He plays Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 2 in A major, the main work in this concert. The concerto was originally written between 1839 and 1840, but the composer then put away the manuscript for a decade. When he returned to the concerto, he revised and scrutinised it repeatedly, finally finishing it in 1861. Liszt dedicated the work to his student Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf, who gave the first performance at the Weimar Court Theatre on 7th January, 1857, with Liszt conducting.

Ravel’s String Quartet in F major is one of the most performed and recorded works in the chamber music repertoire. Ravel was a great admirer of Debussy, and the influence of Debussy’s String Quartet, published ten years earlier, in 1893, is evident. The work premiered at the Société Nationale de Musique on 5th March, 1904, performed by the Heymann Quartet. The version we hear on this occasion was orchestrated by Giancarlo Chiaramello.

^{Video via France Musique concerts on YouTube}

The final work is Ravel’s choreographic poem, La Valse. According to Ravel himself, “At first the scene is limned by a kind of swirling mist through which one discerns, vaguely and intermittently, the waltzing couples. Little by little, the vapours begin to disperse, and the illumination grows brighter, revealing an immense ballroom filled with dancers. The blaze of the chandeliers comes to full splendour. An Imperial Ballet about 1855.” The work symbolised the frenzied death throes of 19th-century imperial society by its dance obsession, the waltz.