I cycle through the morning heat down the gravel path of the Provençal chateau and in the distance the sound of a piano wafts through the trees to the raucous accompaniment of an orchestra of cicadas.

In the shadow of a giant acoustic conch in front of an amphitheatre of empty seats a man in a mauve T-shirt and shorts is thundering his way through a passage of music that seems to me out of context. I know it, but what is it? He stops his practice session and plays it again. Then tackles another passage. He clips a couple of notes and stops again. Then the penny drops: it’s a passage from Wagner’s Ring, which he has transcribed and will be playing at tonight’s concert.

There are three grand pianos on the stage and this one is clearly not to the maestro’s taste, so he moves across to a Steinway. Two technicians roll the other two backstage and the pianist moves on to a couple of Chopin ballades.

This is Nikolaï Lugansky, one of the keyboard giants of the age – or indeed, of any age. The 42-year-old is one of the star attractions at France’s International Festival of the Piano of La Roque d’Anthéron, held in the grounds of the Chateau de Florans 20 miles north of Aix-en-Provence.

It's the most prestigious - yet entirely informal - piano festival in France and takes place in the eponymous village of La Roque d'Anthéron. The main concerts are in the celestial vault of the chateau’s grounds, an outdoor venue shaded by 365 plane trees and a sprinkling of sequoia redwoods.

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There is an extraordinary range of performances and the musical menu ranges from the most intimate solo performances and barnstorming concertos to modern jazz and electronic music. 

Ending on August 20, the festival will accommodate 513 musicians aged 15 to 80 from all over the world playing 92 concerts on 15 different sites, and featuring music that spans 500 years.

I am sitting alone in the morning heat and Lugansky stops again, sees me, and nods a greeting before ironing out some rapid Mendelssohn chord sequences.

La Roque is always a sell-out and attracts the rock stars of the classical world. Such luminaries as Grigory Sokolov, Katia Buniatashvili and Maria João Pires are appearing this year, and it's a great chance to meet them. Virtually all the big names of the past 40 years have played on the lawns of the chateau. It's also a launch pad for the most brilliant youngsters in the world.

The Mediterranean heat soon gains the upper hand and maestro and festival artistic director/joint founder, René Martin, head off to the shaded terrace of a local restaurant.

The febrile chaleur forces the concert back to a later slot but Lugansky, in loose black clothing, looks unflustered. After some Mendelssohn Songs without Words, in which he teases out some delicate four-part polyphonies, he plays Chopin’s 3rd ballade. This unfolds relentlessly, gathering pace before thundering across the finishing line like a Kentucky derby winner.

Pierre Hantaï Pierre Hantaï (Image: Pierre Morales)

He punctuates this and the F-minor ballade with the Nocturne in D flat but the ballade, when it comes, is eloquent, grandiose and orchestral in scope. It starts like a saunter in the woods and ends in a terrifying torrent of demonic chords and arpeggios, a stroll along a path that leads to Hell. Though only twelve minutes long, Chopin here achieves a work of epic scale which Lugansky encompasses absolutely; a perfect prelude to his, and Franz Liszt’s, transcriptions of Wagner.

I fancy the foot stomping applause at the end could have been heard from the Luberon to Marseille, and the two Rachmaninov encores capped a transcendentally brilliant evening.

Earlier in the day I cycled over to the nearby Abbaye de Silvacane to hear a harpsichord recital in the Romanesque cloisters. Here the venerable French harpsichordist Pierre Hentaï played Bach to a smaller but packed audience, with birdsong and cicadas echoing around the ancient colonnades. After playing from the Petit Livre de Clavier, written by J.S. Bach for his son Wilhelm Friedemann, Hentaï capped his elegant performance with a selection of preludes and the prodigious and complex Partita no. 6 in E minor, BWV 830.

There has, meanwhile, been a minor drama. One of the biggest stars of this year’s festival, Arcadi Volodos, has had to pull out owing to Covid. Hotfooting it from the Verbier Festival is the young French genius Lucas Debargue, who is already billeted for two concerts later in the festival.

He puts together at the last minute a programme of Faure, Beethoven and Chopin. But who would have guessed, such was the effortless fluency, precision and lyricism? The 33-year-old’s technique sounded infallible, an extraordinary achievement given that he was largely self-taught in the early days before abandoning the piano to study literature and philosophy.

Lucas Debargue Lucas Debargue (Image: Pierre Morales)

After his superlative account of two Beethoven sonatas and his beloved Fauré, whom he has recently recorded to critical success, I dine with him and Pierre Hantaï and others outside La Table de Susanna, a rather good little restaurant on the outskirts of the village.

He tells me of his background. One night whilst carousing with student friends he found himself drawn to the café’s piano. His talent had not deserted him. He was overheard and the rest, as they say, is history. “I quit my studies and committed myself to music.”

Within four years of intensive training at the Paris conservatoire he was entered for one of the most prestigious prizes in the world, the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He came fourth and the world was suddenly his oyster.

Opposite me is one of France’s last harpsichord builders and his wife, who decorates them. Listening intently is Maître Martin who controls this and other music festivals in France – one of les plus grands fromages on the French music scene.

“La Roque is home for all those who dare to express their originality and personality: the wise, the insolent and the prodigies – poets of all ages and backgrounds who reinvent themselves every year under the plane trees of Florans, in a cathedral of greenery under the Provençal stars. As night falls, the music soars.”

La Roque is as intimate as it is grandiose but my sadness on leaving is leavened by the forthcoming festival in Alba-la-Romaine at the imposing Chateau d’Alba where I am to hear another star of the future, Karine Grosso.

Mark Porter is a travel writer and mature student of piano and organ at the Cannes Conservatoire.