Performing with
Nina Stemme, soprano
Orchestre de Paris; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Nina Stemme, soprano

Programme also includes
Bryce Dessner: Concerto pour violon
Pekka Kuusisto, violin

Created from the happy meeting of Bartók and librettist Béla Balázs, Bluebeard’s Castle was born of the desire to produce an opera in the Hungarian language. Like that of Maeterlinck and Debussy, this collaboration was a tremendous success: few works achieve the calibre of musical and dramatic intensity displayed in this ‘opera in one act, with a prologue’. Succinct and tightly woven, the story is heightened by an orchestra in brilliant, sometimes surreal colours, moving between climactic intensity and mournful layered sound—making this cruel and magnetic fable into a ‘symphonic poem with voice’.