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Lettre à Herbert Blomstedt

Musiciens de l’Orchestre de Paris
Chamber Music
Amphithéâtre - Cité de la musique

Swedish music naturally takes centre stage in this admiring ‘letter’ from the musicians of the Orchestre de Paris to Herbert Blomstedt, the illustrious senior figure among conductors today, and an incomparable master of sound.

Bruckner’s only major chamber music piece, his Quintet (with two violas) is a score of quasi-symphonic logic, characterised by an audacity and complex polyphony that mirror the speculative depth of Beethoven’s last quartets. Curiously considered ‘too serious’ at its premiere in 1889, Nielsen’s Quartet in G minor in fact radiates balance and freshness.

Reaching far beyond its liturgical function, the art harmonium is an instrument with a rich sound which Sibelius used in his Quartet in G minor, a piece in a single movement based on a theme as lilting as it is warm. It appears again in Elegies and Epilogue by Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm (1921-2017), followed by superb pieces by other compatriots of Herbert Blomstedt: a small trio by composer Helena Munktell (1852-1919), who studied in France with Vincent d'Indy, and the quartet by Carl Wilhelm Eugen Stenhammar (1871-1927), a pianist and conductor who was himself influenced by Bruckner and Nielsen. 

Getting here

Porte de Pantin station
M5 Paris Underground (Métro) Line 5 3B Tram 3B
Address
221 avenue Jean-Jaurès, 75019 Paris

To discover

Chamber Music

Silvestrov / Dvořák

Sunday, November 5, 2023 at 11:00 am
The musicians of the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France pay tribute to Ukraine with music by one of the country’s…
Info & Tickets
Chamber Music

Gautier Capuçon / Kim Bernard

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:00 pm
Gautier Capuçon and his young colleague Kim Bernard invite us on a musical journey to the Far North of Grieg, setting…
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Symphonic Concert

Münchner Philharmoniker / Daniel Harding

Friday, April 19, 2024 at 8:00 pm
After their joint concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris in late 2021, where we heard them in a repertoire from the…
Info & Tickets
Symphonic Concert

Orchestre de Paris / Herbert Blomstedt

24 & April 25, 2024
Bruckner’s last fully completed work, Symphony No. 8, displays extraordinary force, as if, in an epic gesture of…
Info & Tickets