The Toulouse Chamber Orchestra Celebrates 70 Years of Musical Excellence

Not every day you’re 20, says the song. Even less 70 when it comes to musical training. This training is dear to the hearts of Toulouse music lovers since it is about the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. In this year of 70^e anniversary, we thought it was more than legitimate to expose it to the lights of History.

An idea from Louis Auriacombe

It was the Palois Louis Auriacombe (1917-1982), a pure product of the Toulouse Conservatory, who studied conducting in Salzburg with the immense Igor Markevitch, who had the idea in 1953 of creating this formation made up of 12 solo strings.

“The whole thing has had its ups and downs, the people of Toulouse still remember it. At the dramatic moment when the OCT disappeared, 20 years ago, the musical delegate of this ensemble, who became its administrator, remembering our meeting five years previously, proposed to me, while the OCT was going reborn in the administrative form of a SCOP, to become its Musical Director”, tells us Gilles Colliardcurrent boss of this training.

He thus took over from Louis Auriacombe. With its arrival in 2004, the OCT can develop the repertoire and more particularly that concerning the entire baroque period. Twenty years ago, the OCT did not have a real baroque repertoire because the musicians were not trained in the interpretation of this repertoire and therefore, even if they saw so-called “historically informed” orchestras flourishing almost everywhere ”, they refused out of concern for ignorance.

7 000 concerts

“Having been personally and very early educated in this music, in the way of playing it, I was able to share my experience with them. I must say that today, the OCT plays the baroque repertoire in a very authentic way” adds Gilles Colliard. With a sumptuous past (7000 concerts, 30 countries visited, 60 records in its catalog), and a present which is no less so with its 2000 subscribers, the OCT is throwing itself headlong into the continuation of his musical adventure with a desire that gives you the shivers.

Whether in Toulouse, Balma or Tournefeuille, the orchestra’s main home ports, the halls are full to applaud the few 45 annual concerts subscription, to which must be added numerous events in all territories and in sometimes unexpected places (factories, hospitals, caves, etc.).

“And all this with a constant concern not only for quality but also for sharing with spectators. One of the very foundations of my career is certainly sharing with the public. We must redouble our efforts, we artists, to meet the public of tomorrow in order to make them aware of the importance of classical music and more generally of art for their personal development,” concludes Gilles Colliard .

Robert Pénavayre

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