Miroirs by Trotignon, Mozart, Haydn, Alkaen (2018/2018), Musiikinjohto Michael Hofstetter, Philharmonie de Paris, Paris, France

This concert offers a beautiful meeting between the different sources of inspiration of Baptiste Trotignon and the Orchester national d'Île-de-France. Jazz pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon (born 1974) is one of the most creative French artists on the international scene, who knows how to juggle styles and improvise with great fantasy. It is less known that, alongside his career in jazz, he also built an equally remarkable classical path by composing works whose style nevertheless remained just as free. And it is this relationship that interests this exceptional musician: a play of mirrors between the written and the improvised, like the two sides of the same artist. The work designed for the Orchester national d'Île-de-France draws on heritage by referring to the concertino, a genre bringing a group of soloists into dialogue with the orchestra, which it revisits very freely. It is precisely this free and improvised gesture that is surprising when listening to the First Piano Concerto composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of eleven. We are amazed at the incredible talent with which Wolfgang, as a child, knew how to place such a particular intensity in each note: everything seems so simple, but everything is already so profound. Joseph Haydn also left his mark on Western musical history with the leap of his overflowing imagination: the “Military” Symphony (1794) is his hundredth. He excelled in this genre, which he constantly renewed without ever repeating himself.