Altinoglu & Vienna Philharmonic

For the second year in a row, the Vienna Philharmonic can be experienced in the series of Great Orchestras. Together with the French conductor Alain Altinoglu, music director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie and chief conductor of the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, this exceptional orchestra will present three groundbreaking works from music history on stage. The program begins with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 40th Symphony in G minor, a simultaneously dark and lucid masterpiece, with which the composer ventured into completely new sound worlds just three years before his death in 1788, pushing the boundaries of tonality. Maurice Ravel also broke new ground with his Boléro, originally conceived as ballet music in 1928. "Help, a madman, a madman," is said to have exclaimed a concertgoer after the premiere of the radically innovative, relentlessly advancing piece on November 22, 1928, to which Ravel replied: "She... she understood it!" Equally 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 transforms into ever new sound characters, with specific orchestral groups coming to the fore in each of the five movements.