Orchestre National de France

How do you listen to an exhibition? Deliberate a tone painting? Stroll through a musical picture gallery? In Modest Mussorgsky’s brilliant piano cycle »Pictures at an Exhibition«, the experiment is carried out to perfection. Fabulous picture motifs evolve into music rich in associations, much like the lazy faun from Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, which assumes characteristic musical shape in Debussy’s »L’après-midi d’un faune«. Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto speaks a language equally rich in tone colours; in tonight’s concert, violinist Julia Fischer coaxes all the fascinating finer points from the score with the full wealth of her talent for expression.