Tableaux d'une exposition by Various, Van (2022/2022), Dirigent Mikko Franck, Château Louis XI, La Côte-Saint-André, Frankrijk

Wagner and Mussorgsky: these two geniuses indebted to Berlioz are on the program for the second concert of the Orchester philharmonique de Radio France conducted by its conductor Mikko Franck. The giant Wagner and his music from the future will open the program, carried by the German baritone Matthias Goerne in two great arias taken from Tristan and Isolde and from The Valkyrie , after the Prelude to Tristan which intrigued Berlioz so much. When Mussorgsky died, on his bedside table was Berlioz's Traite d'Instrumentation et d'Orchestration : that is to say all the influence that the composer from Côte d'Ivoire exerted on the young Russian school, thanks to of his two major trips to Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. First on Glinka, the "father of Russian music", then on the Group of Five, of which Mussorgsky is a member. Pictures at an Exhibitionis undoubtedly his most famous and popular work. The composer sought to translate into music the emotions he felt in front of the paintings exhibited in honor of his friend the painter Viktor Hartmann. Originally composed for the piano, the work owes a great deal to the orchestration performed by Ravel in 1922, which has retained all of its Russian soul. Impossible not to be seduced immediately upon listening to these ten picturesque miniatures interspersed with "Promenades", each of which sketches characters, a place, a scene or an atmosphere: an old castle in Italy, children playing in an alley of Tuileries, a heavy cart pulled by oxen, a ballet of chicks in their shells, the hut of the witch Baba Yaga (on chicken's feet)... and finally, the majesticGreat Gate of kyiv.