Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Lyon Ravel – Chausson – Prokofiev

A concentration of energy and an inexhaustible fountain of sound, Prokofiev's Orchestral Suites from Romeo and Juliet magnify the orchestra as Shakespeare himself would have done! A great musical celebration in store for the 40th anniversary of the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Lyon, in the company of its historic musical director, Kazushi Ono.

Originally dedicated to the piano and then orchestrated by Ravel himself, Tombeau de Couperin (1917) is a double tribute to the master of the French Baroque and to the comrades the composer saw fall at the front during the First World War. Transparency, emotional modesty and distanced melancholy are the hallmarks of this piece, in which eighteenth-century style blends with Ravel's tangy harmonies. Rivaling in subtlety, Chausson's Poème (1896), inspired by the reading of a short story by Tourgueniev, unfurls its spellbinding melodies where painful lyricism alternates with paroxysmal vehemence, giving the violin a magnetic eloquence. Finally, how could we fail to be intoxicated by the accents inspired in Prokofiev by Shakespeare's immortal drama? It is customary for each conductor to compose his own bouquet from the Suites taken from the ballet, and the choice is certainly a difficult one: exotic dances, tireless toccatas, ecstatic melodies evoking the lovers' love, not forgetting the inescapable "March of the Knights" ("Montagues and Capulets"), which remains one of the most striking themes in the history of music.