Fauré / Ravel / Saint-saëns // Bavouzet / Takács-nagy

This evening promises a thoroughly French programme, with Gábor Takács-Nagy conducting three masterpieces from among the most enchanting musical works that culture has ever produced. With light and charming elegance, even without any visual elements on the stage, Gabriel Fauré’s 1919 orchestral suite Masques et bergamasques evokes idylls that have vanished – or perhaps never existed at all. Likewise written in the aftermath of World War One, Ravel’s work on the concert programme owes its genesis in part to a tragedy of the great conflict. Rich in jazzy colors and this time featuring the wonderful French musician Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as the soloist, the D major piano concerto was written exclusively for the left hand so that Paul Wittgenstein, who commissioned the work after losing his right arm at the front, could play it. Following the piano tonight is the queen of the instruments, as the organ in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy takes the spotlight in both movements of Saint-Saëns’s grandiose Third Symphony.