French sound poetry for the start of the festival

The Luzerner Sinfonieorchester’s piano festival began with two symphonic concerts and chamber music performances under the title “Piano symphonique”. In recent years, the focus has increasingly shifted to solo recitals, but this year the symphonic aspect will be emphasised once again, with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester giving the opening concert for the first time, and the addition of a third orchestral concert. The name “Piano symphonique” is doubly apt here: the orchestra will not only perform a showpiece of virtuoso piano literature in the orchestral version of Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, but also accompany pianist Helene Grimaud in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. This idea of combining different instrumentations in one evening made up of two “acts” is in fact already realised in the opening concert. In the first act of this French-themed evening, Grimaud will dive deep into Debussy’s mysteriously submerged “Cathedrale engloutie”, and also perform Ravel’s violin sonatas with violinist Renaud Capuçon. Programmed to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, these sonatas encapsulate Ravel’s development as a composer. The first sonata, of which only one movement was ever completed, was used by Ravel to apply for composition studies with Gabriel Faure. The late second sonata flirts with jazz in the second movement, whose blues style also makes a lively appearance in the piano concerto.