Ravel and Bartók

At this year’s season opener, the ISO welcomes Frenchman Renaud Capuçon, who performs Bela Bartók’s Violin Concerto no. 2, which intertwines folk dances and modernistic style in an ingenious manner. One of today’s finest violinists, Capuçon tours worldwide with the Guarnerius violin previously owned by his teacher, Isaac Stern. In between chamber music performances with pianist Martha Argerich and solo engagements with the Berlin Philharmonic, he directs his own music festival in Aix-en-Provence.

Ravel’s Piano Trio of 1914 is one of the composer’s most celebrated works and is generally counted among the masterworks of 20th-century French chamber music. It is performed here in an orchestral arrangement that has received outstanding reviews around the world — an arrangement by none other than the ISO’s Chief Conductor, Yan Pascal Tortelier. The programme concludes with Ravel’s timeless masterpiece Bolero, in which a simple and innocent melody travels throughout the entire orchestra, accompanied by the heartbeat of a snare drum.