DEBUSSY Danses sacres et profanes
POULENC Stabat Mater
GUILLAUME CONNESSON Supernova
RAVEL Daphnis and Chloë - Suite No. 2

Stéphane Denève conductor
Janice Watson soprano
Sioned Williams harp
BBC Symphony Chorus

After total immersion in the work of Tristan Murail, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Stéphane Denève pursue the French connection in a month of French-influenced concerts with a spellbinding programme of works spanning the 20th Century. Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane and the Second Suite from Ravel’s ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, evoke the seductive decadence of early 1900s Paris. Conceived in 1997 and inspired by both the description of the death of a star in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Kandinsky's 1926 abstract painting 'Several Circles', Guillaume Connesson’s Supernova has gained a reputation as a pulsating concert piece.

Pre-concert talk, 6.00pm
Fountain Room
An introduction to tonight’s concert

MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE Calmo
BERNAT VIVANCOS Messe aux sons des cloches
DEBUSSY Images, Book 2 - Cloches a travers les feuilles
Preludes, Book 1 - La cathedrale engloutie
Masques
RAVEL Miroirs - La vallee des cloches
POULENC Figure humaine

BBC Symphony Chorus
Stephen Jackson condcutor
Cedric Tiberghien piano

A concert in LSO St Luke's featuring the BBC Symphony Chorus and young French pianist Cédric Tiberghien. Figure humaine, with its tender, heart-felt hymn to freedom, explores mankind's ability to overcome oppressive adversity, qualities ideally reflected in Poulenc's exquisite cantata of 1944. Wartime destruction and loss are central to Turnage's Calmo, a moving response to the Iraq War. Turnage conveys his despair through the words 'Dona nobis pacem' - 'Grant them peace'. Catalan composer Bernat Vivancos' unique blend of women's voices and percussion is another 'must hear', the work's bells resounding from the balcony of St Luke's.

STRAUSS Salome - Dance of the Seven Veils
CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor
RAVEL La valse
SCHMITT La tragédie de Salomé – Suite

Lionel Bringuier conductor
Nelson Freire piano

French symbolism and the writings of Stéphane Mallarmé heavily influence Oscar Wilde’s lyric drama, Salomé. Strauss’s operatic setting, complete with its provocative ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, dodged the censor to make headway in the opera house long before Wilde’s play was permitted on stage. The ‘Salome craze’, which swept like wildfire across fin de siècle Europe, inspired everything from Isadora Duncan’s erotic dancing to Florent Schmitt’s ballet La tragédie de Salomé, a resounding pre-echo of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

BBC Music Intro concert
This concert is a Music Intro concert, with tickets at only £5 each for families. Please see website for further details.