Altinoglu & Wiener Philharmoniker

For the second year in a row, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra can be experienced in the Great Orchestras series. Together with French conductor Alain Altinoglu, Music Director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie and Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the exceptional orchestra will perform three literally groundbreaking works of music history. It begins with Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's 40th Symphony in G minor, a masterpiece that is both sombre and lucid, with which the composer explored completely new worlds of sound right up to the limits of tonality in 1788, three years before his death. Maurice Ravel also broke new ground with his Bolero, originally conceived as ballet music in 1928. "Help, a madman, a madman," a concertgoer is said to have exclaimed in horror after the premiere of the radically new, relentlessly progressing piece on November 22, 1928, to which Ravel replied: "She ... she got it!" No less extraordinary is the piece Métaboles by his 41 years younger compatriot Henri Dutilleux: premiered in 1965 as a commissioned work by conductor George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra, the music here is constantly transformed into new sound characters, with certain orchestral groups coming to the fore in each of the five movements.