PROGRAMME
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3

PERFORMING WITH
Orchestre de Paris
Klaus Mäkelä, conductor

VENUE NOTE:
Beethoven’s epic-tragic grandeur, sublimated by Mitsuko Uchida’s touch, shines through on this exceptional line-up, all the more so as it is preceded by a premiere and followed by Berlioz’s excess.

It is a privilege to attend the premiere of A Sky too Small bythe young British composer Charlotte Bray, unquestionably one of the most promising talents of her generation. Commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris, this fascinating work is followed by Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3, in which the composer, emancipating himself from the legacy of Mozart and Haydn, takes a leap into history. In the “tragic” key of C minor, he offers an Allegro with a heroic key, a Largo in which the piano, with nocturnal tenderness, unfolds and then adorns a sublime cantilena, and a Finale with a magnetic impulse, until apotheosis.

Finally, the Symphonie fantastique, in addition to being part of the historical roots of the Orchestre de Paris, remains a true standard of French music. Excessive, theatrical, rich in reminiscences of Shakespeare, Goethe, and of course Beethoven, it is structured around a “fixed idea”, until the grandiose, and parodic explosion of the Dies Irae. No work, perhaps, by its scope, the number of personnel it requires, its contrasts and its intensity, is capable of more magnifying the power and expressive capacities of a symphony orchestra.

A Sky too Small by Charlotte Bray was commissioned by the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Philharmonie de Paris – Orchestre de Paris. The world premiere took place on July 13, 2024 with the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä.