French Evening

The pieces in this program are united not only by the French musical tradition, but also by a special sense of timbre and a close attention to how an individual voice changes through interaction with other voices.

The concert opens with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The story of this piece begins with dramatic circumstances: Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right hand during the First World War but refused to give up his concert career. He turned to leading composers with a request to write pieces for the left hand, and Ravel embraced the commission as a difficult yet extraordinarily engaging creative challenge. Even though the soloist's part is written exclusively for the left hand, the piano texture sounds remarkably full and rich, creating the illusion of playing with both hands.

In Camille Saint-Saëns's The Muse and the Poet, the musical landscape shifts character: instead of a single solo voice, we hear a dialogue between the violin and the cello. The title was suggested by the publisher and should not be taken as a literal program—the violin does not strictly personify the Muse, nor the cello the Poet. Saint-Saëns himself described the piece as "a conversation between two instruments rather than a contest between two virtuosos," exemplifying the art of listening and responding, where true dialogue stems from attentiveness to another voice rather than opposition.

The second half opens with Saint-Saëns's First Cello Concerto, written for French cellist Auguste Tolbecque. For the 37-year-old composer, already known as a young and radical modernist, having his work performed by the most prestigious Parisian orchestra was a major milestone that strengthened his reputation in the French musical community. The concerto is distinguished by bold formal innovation: despite its conciseness, it spans a wide range of moods and reveals the versatile expressive capabilities of the cello.

The finale of the program is the Second Suite from Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé, the three episodes of which are considered one of his greatest achievements as an orchestrator. The composer works with timbres with extreme precision, turning the subtlest shifts in orchestral color into sweeping climaxes. Thus, the final page of the program does not simply conclude the evening; it encapsulates its main idea: how a personal musical voice, through interaction with others, can gradually become part of a grand and polyphonic orchestral world.

Supported by the French Institute