• Details

    Mozart’s Idomeneo owes its ballet sequence to the influence of French opera, and it launches a programme featuring two Frenchmen who idolised Mozart: Ravel and Messiaen.

    Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G adds a jazzy colouring to its Classical influences, while Oiseaux tristes and La valse contrast the doleful calls of lost forest birds with a dark, swirling portrait of the disintegration of Vienna.

    The world premiere of a recently rediscovered work by Messiaen – originally intended for the composer’s Éclairs sur l’au-delà – brings more birdsong (that of the tui from New Zealand), while Stravinsky’s urbane neo-Classical Symphony combines piquancy and elegance.

  • Programme

    Mozart
    Idomeneo – ballet music 24’

    Ravel
    Piano Concerto in G major 23’

    interval

    Messiaen, orch. C. Dingle
    Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau tui) c4’
    world premiere

    Ravel, orch. C. Matthews
    Miroirs – Oiseaux tristes 4’
    BBC commission: world premiere

    Stravinsky
    Symphony in Three Movements 22’

    Ravel
    La valse 11’

    Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano

    BBC Philharmonic
    Nicholas Collon conductor