The Palazzetto Bru Zane joins forces with the Orchestre National de France to present a special concert retracing the composer’s career through rare and little-known pieces: his cantata for the 1837 Prix de Rome (Marie Stuart), the unpublished first version of the Poison Aria from Roméo et Juliette, his opera Cinq-Mars (revived only in 2015), excerpts from his epic sacred oratorio Mors et Vita, and the big female duet from Le Tribut de Zamora, the composer’s last opera. As is appropriate for a tribute, the concert also recalls some of Gounod’s greatest successes, with the Overture to Mireille and the Ballet Music from Faust, which have constantly delighted music lovers for more than a century now. “Bravos for the soloists and orchestra!” (Operawire)
Hengelbrock conducts Bach and Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Thomas Hengelbrock and the Orchestre de Paris teamed up to perform one of the most brilliant works of European church music: J.S. Bach’s Magnificat. This opus is a musical setting of the biblical canticle Magnificat, which is one of the most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn, frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. Following this, the musicians draw the attention of the audience to the content and structural parallels between Bach and Felix Mendelssohn, who has rendered outstanding services to the revivification of the interest in music of J.S. Bach. The musicians delight the audience with the Psalm 42 and the Christmas Cantata, two compositions full of religious fervor.
Paris: Hommage à Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, a seminal figure in the field of contemporary classical music, died on January 5th 2016. His name is closely connected to the Orchestre de Paris, which he has conducted more than a hundred times, and to the Philharmonie de Paris, whose “Grande Salle Pierre Boulez” was brought into existence due to his continuous endeavor.Two weeks after Boulez’ death, supported by young musicians from the Conservatoire de Paris, the Orchestra de Paris joined forces with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the IRCAM – both founded by Pierre Boulez – in order to pay him tribute. The programme of this very special evening features a varied selection of the composer’s works. As a result of the concert night, “one simple word comes up, full of enthusiasm and emotion: merci…” (Bachtrack). PROGRAM: Pierre Boulez: Dialogue de l’ombre double extraits; Improvisation I; Messagesquisse; Dérive 1 pour six instruments; Improvisation II; Notations pour orchestre I, IV, III, II, VII
Monteverdi in Saint-Denis
After speaking with her for one and a half minutes, I knew that I would even sing Heavy Metal for her if she wanted me to,’ gushed Rolando Villazón after meeting French conductor and harpsichordist Emmanuelle Haïm. Devoted to cultivating the works of Monteverdi, Handel, Rameau and Purcell, the vibrant Haïm has become one of the leading lights of the Early Music scene. Trained as a pianist and harpsichordist in Paris, she assisted William Christie before founding her own ensemble ‘Le Concert d’Astrée,’ which performs on historical instruments. Rolando Villazón is better known for his performances as tormented lover and ‘dream’ partner of Anna Netrebko in ‘La Traviata’ and ‘La Bohème’ (both available from UNITEL CLASSICA) than for his accounts of early Baroque music. But in this concert of works by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), the powerhouse tenor proves his allround mastery of italianità. The main work is the ‘Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda,’ a descriptive piece for three voices based on a text from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem ‘Gerusalemme liberata.’
Britten’s String Quartets – Belcea Quartet
The Belcea Quartet is one of the world’s leading chamber music ensembles, having won many international accolades. Now, with the string quartets, the musicians have rediscovered a gem of twentieth century chamber music. “Here is a composer moving gently and magically from the Romantic and Classical canon towards aural visions of lightness, of sublimated pain and brooding escapism. Shame on those who do not know these pieces.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). The Belcea Quartet succeeds in an outstanding manner in holding the balance between the youthful exuberance of the first two quartets and the lyrical solemnity and sweet morbidity of the third.
Salonen conducts Bartók
Live from the awe-inspiring new Philharmonie de Paris, the French capital’s elite orchestra performs a programme devoted to the endlessly fascinating music of Béla Bartók. On the podium is Esa-Pekka Salonen, one of the composer’s truly authoritative interpreters. This concert was hailed as “revelatory” by the leading French journal Diapason, “a unique expressive and sensory voyage (…) with precise phrasing and incredible flexibility (…) an irresistible feeling for timbre, tightropewalking accents, acoustic spaces, instrumental breathing (…) rhythmic agility, range of sensitive colours, humour and irony, brilliance, luminosity, moments of astonishing sweetness. The Orchestre de Paris soared and surpassed itself. Salonen is clearly a unique artist.” PROGRAM Bartok: Dance Suite; Concerto for two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra; Concerto for Orchestra
Coppel-i.a.
While love is breaking into the lives of two young people, an artificial being will challenge what they believed they knew about it… Revisiting this classic of the Romantic repertoire, Jean-Christophe Maillot gives us, with an original musical score, a reflection on the search for the ideal partner in a technologically advanced society. Is it still the flesh and blood being with which we are familiar or a different being, making us question our allegiance to the human race? “Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo magnificent as always” (La Stampa)
Kalédoscope
In almost thirty years, Mourad Merzouki has blown up the bars of the cage. As a pioneer in the transition of hip-hop dance from the street to the stage, he has contributed to the evolution of this aesthetic and given it a prominent place in the contemporary choreographic landscape. From boxing to circus, passing through classical music or aerial dance, from one creation to the next, the audience is immersed in a new universe, always singular, poetic and visual. In this vast artistic blending constituting his repertoire, Mourad Merzouki appears as a creator-alchemist. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Kalypso festival and the end of his term of directorship at the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne, Mourad Merzouki offers a kaleidoscopic tour of his artistic career. From Käfig (1996) to Zéphyr (2021), he has taken extracts from his repertoire, echoing their universes for the first time live on stage. Placed side by side, they reveal a delightful palette of colours.
In C – A ballet by Sasha Waltz
Terry Riley’s landmark work of musical minimalism In C comes to life in this choreography by Sasha Waltz. Captured on film at the Philharmonie de Paris, no two performances of this work are ever the same. In C, consisting of 53 melodic phrases played in sequence, is translated into 53 movements with a set of rules. Within these rules, each dancer has the freedom to decide how often to repeat a certain figure. As the performers on stage execute and repeat the movement patterns, they develop a sort of “danced fugue” (NDR): “All the time, Waltz and her ensemble show us a dialogue between music and dance. What makes In C extra fascinating is that what we also have here is a conversation with space and time, the looping and overlaying movement, especially when laid over the repeating and overlapping sound, disrupting the latter in particular” (Seeing Dance).
La Princesse Légère
A princess who is as light as a feather: The opera La Princesse Légère by Violeta Cruz, premiered in 2017, follows the fairytale The Light Princess by George MacDonald. Written for children and those with a child’s soul, his tales enchanted J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis Carroll. The Light Princess calls to mind, with humor and poetry, the way children confront the gravity of the adult world and how parents learn to recognize the uniqueness of each child. The score is an outburst of life, in which electronics meet chanson and the sound of opera.