Event info

Claude Debussy
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

Camille Saint-Saëns
Odelette

Toru Takemitsu
I Hear the Water Dreaming

Cécile Chaminade
Concertino

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1

Eva Ollikainen
conductor

Emmanuel Pahud
soloist

Emmanuel Pahud is one of the foremost flautists of our time, renowned for his “golden flowing tone” (The Guardian). He is a highly sought-after soloist and has recorded and released over 40 albums with Warner Classics. Since 1993, Pahud has served as principal flautist of the acclaimed Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which he joined only 22 years of age. It is therefore cause for special celebration to listen to him perform three flute concertos in one night, each of them a stunning little work in its own right: French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’s Odelette has alluring Turkish influences, I Hear the Water Dreaming by the Japanese master Toru Takemitsu is at once dreamlike and philosophical, and Cécile Chaminade’s Concertino is a quintessential masterpiece of French Romanticism. The concert opens with the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy. The flute is no less a solo instrument in this piece than in the concertos, as legend tells us it is the instrument of the mystical faun. The second half of the concert is dedicated to Brahms’s First Symphony, a colossus that was over 20 years in the making.