Born in distant 1964 from a lucky intuition of the great (and greatly missed) Sandor Vegh, Cervo’s International Festival of Chamber Music is today one of the outstanding cultural events of the region Liguria, that is celebrated both nationally and worldwide.

The Hungarian violinist discovered the extraordinary acoustics of the Corallini Church square almost by chance. He then decided, together with the town council and a few musician friends, to start a musical event: it was thus that Cervo, an enchanted medieval village almost perpendicular to the sea and already home to such artists as Felice Casorati, Henry Furst, and Adalberto Campagnoli, became the point of attraction of personalities in the world of art and culture.

We remember Michelangeli, Richter, Kempff, Annie Fisher, Pollini, Cziffra, Magaloff, Cherkassky, Boukoff, Argerich, Ciccolini, Weissenberg, Kocsis, Demus, Swann, Badura-Skoda, Thiollier, Andras Schiff, Vegh, Menuhin, Gitlis, Ughi, Accardo, Kogan, Franz P. Zimmermann, Gazzelloni, Rampal.

To introduce a classic music festival in this way, as a list, may seem unusual, unsuitable, even unkind. Everybody reading these names, not just devotees, though, will acknowledge the power they evoke: these musicians represent, each one in his or her own sublime way, an aesthetic peak in over three centuries of musical production.

The square before the Corallini Church in Cervo has had the honour of hosting performances by all of them.

It is thus inadequate to describe the qualities of this Festival complacently, from the charming square where it is held to the medieval architecture ennobling the field of vision, because each fabulous stepping stone in this place has been exalted and made immortal by the passage of these stars of classical music.


Sándor Végh