Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

Jonathan Nott, since 2017 Music and Artistic Director of the Geneva-based Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducts a typically stimulating programme bookended by two 20th-century modernist classics.

There is still no more influential piece of music from the last century than Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and today, well over a hundred years after its infamous Paris premiere, its brutal, primitive-sounding rhythms and spectacular orchestration still pack a punch. In his 1927 Arcana, Edgar Varèse, who described himself as "a worker in frequencies and intensities" rather than a composer, also made use of a huge orchestra with a percussion battery to match. But, unlike the ancient history scenario of The Rite, this phantasmagorical, hallucinatory work seems rooted in the urban sprawl of 1920s New York where Varèse lived.

In between these two iconic behemoths, celebrated German soprano Christiane Karg joins the OSR and Nott for Ravel's song cycle Shéhérazade, born of his fascination with the exotic allure of the Orient.

Recorded in March at Victoria Hall, Geneva, and introduced by Fiona Talkington.

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

8.10 pm
Interval music (from CD)
Ravel: Introduction & Allegro
Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Wenzel Fuchs (clarinet),
Marie-Pierre Langlamet (harp), Christophe Horak (violin),
Simon Roturier (violin), Ignacy Miecznikowski (viola),
Bruno Delepelaire (cello)

8.20 pm
Ravel: Shéhérazade

Edgard Varèse: Arcana

Christiane Karg (soprano)
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Jonathan Nott (conductor)