Daniel Harding by Varèse, Turnage, Beethoven, From (2016/2016), Conductor Daniel Harding, Palazzo Mauro De André, Ravenna, Italy

What have Beethoven’s symphonies got in common with the scores of Edgar Varèse? An answer is provided by Daniel Harding: from the rostrum of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, he is one of the very few who can match the timeless classic feel of the first to the contemporary research of the second. The orchestra, a “nomadic” ensemble, walks the listener through the meaning of its three-word slogan: Live, Play, Dream. Varèse’s fascinating “spatial projections”, so futuristic at the time of composition (1925) and meant to investigate the subtle relationship between a sound and its source, will be followed by the Italian début of a work by Turnage, a contemporary English composer influenced by Miles Davis’s electric jazz, enhanced by Hardenberger’s virtuosic trumpet: once again, a collision of distant universes.