MAGICIENS DU SON

The concert opens in the mists of Impressionism with Claude Debussy and his Symphonic Suite from the opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy, the unrivalled master of suggestion, paints a symbolist world where emotions are whispered rather than proclaimed. Fin de nuit for piano and orchestra (2017) by Philippe Boesmans, a leading figure in Belgian contemporary music, offers a fascinating dialogue between soloist and orchestra. Through complex, vibrant textures evoking the blurred border between dream and early dawn, Boesmans, a true alchemist of the orchestra, unfolds a kaleidoscopic palette of sound. The evening concludes with a pivotal work by Richard Wagner: the Vorspiel und Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In 1859, Wagner set off a harmonic revolution, paving the way for the atonality and chromaticism that would shape the century to come.