ROBERTO GONZÁLEZ-MONJAS / MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN…

First performed in 1948, Poulenc’s Sinfonietta is a whirlwind of good humour and gaiety. Highly rhythmic, the work rekindles the pre-war spirit and charms with particularly enchanting writing for the wind instruments. One comes away light as a feather!
Camille Saint-Saëns was a tireless globetrotter. One biography states that the composer made 179 journeys abroad to 27 different countries during his lifetime. Written between January and May 1896, his Concerto No. 5 ‘Egyptian’ was conceived during a long stay in Cairo and Luxor. The second movement of the Concerto No. 5 is an Orientalist marvel. Saint-Saëns draws on a boatman’s song heard during a cruise on the Nile, before taking us to an imaginary Asia with the sounds of a Balinese gamelan. One could not find a better captain than pianist Marc-André Hamelin to explore the undulating poetry of this gem.
Finally, Fauré’s Requiem is one of the masterpieces of the sacred repertoire. It is hard to imagine that the composer had just lost both his parents when he created this cathedral of unearthly whiteness in which death is seen ‘as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness beyond, rather than as a painful passage’. For this moving requiem, Roberto González-Monjas will rely on a fine pair of soloists (Ying Fang, Luca Micheletti) and the choir of the Oberwalliser Vokalensemble.