Essentials: Le Poème De L’extase by Scriabin, Wagner, Nuo (2024/2024), Dirigentas Karina Canellakis, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Essentials series introduces you to the masterpieces you will be happy to know, performed by the world-famous Concertgebouw Orchestra and complete with a lively introduction by the incomparable Thomas Vanderveken. At Essentials we welcome a new generation of music lovers, and the concerts typically have a pleasant informal atmosphere. Richard Wagner championed the larger than life. In Tristan und Isolde, he aims his telescope at a young couple in love. Their passion is too great for this earthly world, resulting in extremely sensual music practically bursting at its harmonic seams with desire. Aleksandr Skryabin goes even further in Le poème de l’extase, for whom music served as ‘a bridge to the beyond’. This work explores a spiritual world that others can only dream of – but Skryabin places the listener right at the very centre of it all, with the orchestra producing a kaleidoscope of dazzling colour. Two ecstatic Essentials for the price of one. Essentials starts at 9 p.m. with an imaginative introduction to the programme (in Dutch).