A romantic and joyful musical journey through melodies, overtures, and arias celebrating the forests and legends of Bohemia and beyond. A festive and melodious rendezvous to celebrate the New Year.
Traditionally, the Regional Orchestra of Cannes opens the New Year with a promenade concert whose theme varies each time. This year, Philippe Bender invites music lovers to a musical journey through the forests of Bohemia and other lands.
The performance begins with the freshness of children trained in music using the Suzuki method, who will play a piece by Claude-Henri Joubert “Balthazar” accompanied by the orchestra.
The program features works with different atmospheres where charm, nostalgia, gaiety, and dreams intertwine.
A nostalgic atmosphere with Dvorak’s Silent Woods, where the cello expresses the profound beauty of the Bohemian forests, sometimes contemplative like the prayer of Kol Nidrei by Max Bruch, an extraordinary piece for cello featuring traditional melodies of the Ashkenazi rite, or filled with dreams as in the aria “Sombre forêt” by a surprising Gioacchino Rossini, who signed his last opera with Guillaume Tell, from which this aria is extracted. This same Rossini will lead the Orchestra
into the whirlwind of crescendos he mastered, with the overture of Semiramide.
Nostalgia will also be expressed in the famous Spectre of the Rose, from Berlioz’s Summer Nights, before giving way
to lighter and more lively moments set by Villanelle, also from Summer Nights, and the flower duet
from Lakmé.
Caroline Cartens will then take us to another forest, inhabited by Vilya the dryad with mysterious eyes, brought to life
by Franz Lehár in his operetta The Merry Widow. Finally, from the woods of Bohemia, jasmine domes, and Brazilian warmth, we will move to the Viennese forest with Johann Strauss, whose several waltzes and polkas will be performed to conclude
this legendary and bucolic musical journey.
Sunday, January 8, 2012 – 4:30 PM | Théâtre Croisette – JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes Featuring Henri Demarquette (cello), Caroline Cartens (soprano), Hélène Delalande (mezzo-soprano) and Philippe Bender (conductor)
