Programme
- Danses rituelles
- Piano Concerto No 12 in A major, K 414
- Hymne
Performers
- Ludovic Morlotconductor
Concert Information
This afternoon, we’re delighted to welcome back to MediaCityUK the ѿý Philharmonic’s Associate Artist, conductor Ludovic Morlot.
Two works from Ludovic’s native France will bookend the programme.
André Jolivet originally composed his Danses rituelles in 1938-9 for solo piano and he orchestrated it the year after finishing it. Jolivet described the ritualistic purpose of the five dances at key moments in individuals’ lives in ancient societies: “These are,” he said, “dances of birth, puberty, war and virility, love and marriage, death and resurrection.”
In the mid-1930s, Jolivet and Olivier Messiaen were amongst a group of composers who co-founded the group La jeune France. Their aims included re-establishing a more communicative and human way of composing and restoring spiritual values in music; Messiaen’s Hymne (au Saint Sacrement), written around this time, perfectly reflects these ideals.
Steven Osborne joins us as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 12 in A (K 414), one of three Mozart started working on around the time he moved from Salzburg to Vienna. In a letter to his father, he described his intentions in these pieces as being “a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.”