Kenneth Hesketh’s orchestrated version of Maurice Ravel’s Sites auriculaires, composed for two pianos between 1895 and 1897, will be followed by Poème for Violin and Orchestra by Ernest Chausson, a deeply contemplative piece that reflects the artistic personality of a man who was interested in all aspects of creativity, not only music.
Virtuoso performance is even more explicit in Ravel’s Tzigane, a demonic composition invoking traditional Hungarian music and circus-like acrobatics, commissioned by violinist Jelly d’Aranyi, who had worked with Béla Bartók.
In the second part of the programme, the voice will come to the fore, as we listen to Ravel’s rarely performed one-act opera L’heure espagnole, with a plot set in the workshop of a clockmaker, in which the folk element reappears from time to time.
