On March 9 & 10, Yuja Wang joins the Orchestre de Paris, under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä, for a colorful program of works by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Duruflé, at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Marking his first season as Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Maestro Mäkelä conducts a program beginning with Stravinsky’s vivacious Ebony Concerto, played by clarinetist Philippe Berrod, which was written during the composer’s early years in America. Ms. Wang will perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work he wrote at eighteen years old that reveals the emergence of Rachmaninoff’s fascinating musical language.
Duruflé’s profound Requiem concludes the evening, featuring mezzo soprano Valentina Pluzhnikova, baritone Iurii Samoilov, and the Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris and Choeur de jeunes de l’Orchestre de Paris. The serene and intimate emotion of this work, seldom performed in its symphonic version, is reminiscent of work by Fauré, 17th-century French motets, or even Gregorian chanting.