Denève and Thibaudet

Jean-Yves Thibaudet has been forced to make a programme change, due to personal reasons. He will therefore perform Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major instead of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1, which was originally programmed. 

Frenchmen Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Stéphane Denève are both among the foremost musicians today in their respective domains. In recent years, Thibaudet has been praised for his albums (his interpretations of Debussy’s piano music have received particular acclaim), and he tours the world both as a soloist with orchestras and with a solo programme. Denève is chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Brussels Philharmonic, and principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His recent assignments have included collaborations with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and a guest performance with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

Denève will take on Debussy’s  beloved music: the sensual and symbolic tonal interpretation of Mallarmé’s poem about a faun’s afternoon, which began unlike anything audiences had ever heard before.

Lera Auerbach’s Icarus from 2011 is intense, expressive music inspired by the myth of Icarus. Here, she raises the question of what success and failure truly are. Fantastic and mystical elements also appear in Florent Schmitt’s tone poem Tragedie de Salome from 1907, which illustrates the relationship between Salome and Herod through joy, pleasure, cruelty and dread.