This afternoon, we’re delighted to welcome back to MediaCityUK the ±«Óătv Philharmonic’s Associate Artist, conductor Ludovic Morlot.
Two works from Ludovic’s native France will bookend the programme.
André Jolivet originally composed his Danses rituelles in 1938-9 for solo piano and he orchestrated it the year after finishing it. Jolivet described the ritualistic purpose of the five dances at key moments in individuals’ lives in ancient societies: “These are,” he said, “dances of birth, puberty, war and virility, love and marriage, death and resurrection.”
In the mid-1930s, Jolivet and Olivier Messiaen were amongst a group of composers who co-founded the group La jeune France. Their aims included re-establishing a more communicative and human way of composing and restoring spiritual values in music; Messiaen’s Hymne (au Saint Sacrement), written around this time, perfectly reflects these ideals.
Steven Osborne joins us as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 12 in A (K 414), one of three Mozart started working on around the time he moved from Salzburg to Vienna. In a letter to his father, he described his intentions in these pieces as being “a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.”
