NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Nicolas Altstaedt / Fabien Gabel
Chausson / Dutilleux / Debussy
If there is one feature that seems to unite all French composers, it is the tendency towards sensuousness of sound and musical colour. For his debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, conductor Fabian Gabel brings works from his French homeland to Hamburg: Dutilleux, Chausson and Ravel. Substituting Alisa Weilerstein, who is currently expecting a child, is the German-French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt. The programme remains unchanged.
Composer Henri Dutilleux, who died in 2013, was a true sound artist of best French tradition. His cello concerto »Tout un monde lontain ... « (»A Whole World in the Distance«) is dedicated to the enigmatic and symbolic poetry of the poet Charles Baudelaire. In five seamlessly intertwining movements, which are headlined with quotations from Baudelaire’s »Flowers of Evil«, the cello acts as a mediator, »ideally located between Baudelaire’s universe and the world of sound« (Dutilleux).
The cello concerto is flanked by Chausson’s early-impressionistic Poème »Soir de fête« as well as works by two Frenchmen who were only too happy to be infected by the exoticism of their Spanish neighbours.
Here, Ravel’s famous study of timbre, his »Boléro«, is not be missed! »The piece is made of pure orchestral material without music – made of a long, very gradual crescendo,« Ravel commented laconically on this worldwide chart-topper.
Performers
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Nicolas Altstaedt violoncello
conductor Fabien Gabel
Programme
Ernest Chausson
Soir de fête op. 32
Henri Dutilleux
Tout un monde lointain / Konzert für Violoncello und Orchester
Claude Debussy
Ibéria / Trois Images für Orchester
Maurice Ravel
Une barque sur l’océan / aus: Miroirs
Boléro