Daniel Harding & Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Programme

Béla Bartók
The miraculous mandarin, op. 19 (Sz 73). Suite

Maurice Ravel
Concerto for piano and orchestra G major

Interval

Hector Berlioz
Roméo et Juliette, op. 17

Daniel Harding, Conductor

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Programme Booklet

Download Programme Booklet (in German)

The last time the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet made a guest appearance  with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was in 2013, when he took on the challenging piano part of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony under the baton of Mariss Jansons. This time he will play Maurice Ravel’s brilliant G major Piano Concerto. This jazz-drenched jeu d’esprit of Mozartian elegance is a bravura piece for any pianist, but especially one from France. In a nod to Ravel’s Basque origins, The opening of the programme is the suite from Béla Bartók’s breath-taking ballet-pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, a symbol of the breakaway mood in early 20th-century music. Bartók’s erotic frenzy provoked a fully-fledged scandal at its Cologne première in 1926, not only for its garish score, but because of its squalid subject-matter, which deals with prostitution, robbery and murder in an urban milieu.

Mariss Jansons is undertaking a regenerative break on the advice of his doctors, which will not allow him to conduct concerts planned with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for the months of June, July and August.

Photo Gallery

Here are some impressions of the concerts with Daniel Harding and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.