JAMES GAFFIGAN / PHILIPPE MOURATOGLOU
A spellbinding afternoon, like a fine journey from Spain to Hungary. The talent of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra in full bloom.
Programme
JOAQUÍN RODRIGO (1901-1999)
Concierto de Aranjuez in D major
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Concerto for Orchestra Sz. 116
Concert without interval
Artist(s)
- Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra
- James Gaffigan conductor
- Philippe Mouratoglou guitar
James Gaffigan conducts Dukas: L’Apprenti sorcier at Verbier Festival 2026 (VFJO)
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Blind from the age of three, Joaquín Rodrigo began his musical studies in the Spanish city of Valencia, before moving to Paris. Composed in 1939, the Concierto de Aranjuez is the most famous of his five guitar concertos. In the opening Allegro con spirito, Rodrigo evokes the gardens of the Aranjuez palace that he visited on honeymoon with his wife Victoria. Every scent and murmur of this open-air garden can be sensed, thanks to transparent writing in which the guitar (here the Frenchman Philippe Mouratoglou) shines freely. A masterpiece within a masterpiece, the slow movement holds one of the most beautiful melodies in the Iberian repertoire. Some scholars have heard in it a contemporary allusion to the massacre of Guernica, whereas the enigma of the work lay above all in a personal tragedy: his wife’s miscarriage during their honeymoon.
In the second part, the music director of the ‘Juniors’, James Gaffigan, conducts another landmark work, written during the Second World War. In 1943, Béla Bartók, exiled in the United States, sings of his lost homeland with the strength of desperation. In his Concerto for Orchestra, each section steps into the spotlight, leading to a final dance of irrepressible vitality.
