In partnership with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Théâtre du Châtelet is running a new series of concerts this season comprising a morning session reserved for schoolchildren and a lunchtime session for all ages. The format for both sessions is the same: a contemporary work or a ten-minute devised piece, followed by a discussion with the composer or a musician. Then, building on the insights gleaned from the discussion, the work is performed a second time and interacts with a major work of classical music.
Commissioned to compose Matka to mark the 150th anniversary of Jean Sibelius’ birth, Eric Tanguy devised the work as a journey, both through geographical space as well as internally, inspired by the wild beauty of Finnish nature. Tanguy works by a perpetual renewal of the elements, like his illustrious elder, seeking “proliferation and transformation rather than variation”. Another landscape of this concert: a few stops along Smetana‘s famous symphonic poem, The Moldau, the German name of the Vltava river that crosses Bohemia and Prague to flow into the Elbe… Julien Leroy, passionate about contemporary music and guest conductor with many prestigious orchestras, will lead this program rich in contrasts, conceived as an extended voyage.