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Grisey and Stockhausen show the value of old-school technique in a festival of music from the recent past and futuristic present.

With only the latest composition by Tristan Murail acting as a palate-cleanser, this was a recital by a leading French pianist that was full of Romantic power and passion in works by Chopin and Beethoven.

Will this centenary year yield a finer Vaughan Williams symphony performance than this account of the Fourth? 

The Canadian-born Frenchman is known for his boldness in programming, often presenting both the timely and the timeless in a single offering.

Saturday saw the BBC Symphony Orchestra open their 2013/14 season with an evening of firsts. Not only was this Sakari Oramo’s first Barbican season concert as Chief Conductor, but the programme placed a première by leading “spectral” composer Tristan Murail alongside Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto and Mahler’s First Symphony.

“Synesthesia” is a neurological condition that causes an involuntary sensory experience to be provoked from an initial stimulation of a different sensory or cognitive pathway – for instance, automatically associating colors with numbers, letters, or sounds. Olivier Messiaen, a 20th-century French composer, organist, and ornithologist, “heard” colors in all music, whether tonal, modal, or serial.

En associant Unsuk Chin, Tristan Murail et Steve Reich, Pierre Bleuse a proposé un concert d'ouverture passionnant, dirigé avec une telle fluidité que les partitions ont été interprétées sans difficulté apparente.

Consacrée à la musique de la compositrice autrichienne, l'édition 2025 du festival a proposé une pléiade de créations d'esthétiques variées, de l'énergie folle de Christophe Bertrand au bruitisme de Margareta Ferek-Petrić.

Ein beeindruckendes zur christlichen Osterbotschaft passendes Konzerterlebnis mit Het Collectief.

Jean-Paul Gasparian livre un récital qui montre une approche pianistique des plus fines. Excellent dans une première partie Debussy-Murail-Messiaen, le musicien montre quelques difficultés dans Chopin ensuite.