Susanna Mälkki conducts Dukas, Saint-Saëns, Saariaho, & Ravel

The lush opulence of the great French repertoire, long a BSO specialty, is on display in this program. Frequent guest conductor Susanna Mälkki leads French cellist Gautier Capuçon in Camille Saint-Saëns’s alternately exhilarating and impassioned Cello Concerto in A minor. Opening the concert is Paul Dukas’s breathlessly engaging Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was famously animated by Walt Disney. Maurice Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloé encompasses the ballet’s spectacularly thrilling final scenes depicting daybreak, a sensuous duet, and a raucous celebratory dance. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar for chorus and orchestra draws on her own French sensibilities in a work thematically related to her celebrated opera L’Amour de loin.  

The lush opulence of the great French repertoire, long a BSO specialty, is on display in this program. Frequent guest conductor Susanna Mälkki leads French cellist Gautier Capuçon in Camille Saint-Saëns’s alternately exhilarating and impassioned Cello Concerto in A minor. Opening the concert is Paul Dukas’s breathlessly engaging Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was famously animated by Walt Disney. Maurice Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloé encompasses the ballet’s spectacularly thrilling final scenes depicting daybreak, a sensuous duet, and a raucous celebratory dance. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar for chorus and orchestra draws on her own French sensibilities in a work thematically related to her celebrated opera L’Amour de loin.