Joshua Weilerstein conducts Pépin, Dutilleux, and Franck — With Victor Julien-Laferrière

At the magnificent Opéra de Lille, the Orchestre National de Lille and their music director, American conductor Joshua Weilerstein, perform a dazzling program entitled "Between Three Worlds," featuring music by Dutilleux, Franck, and contemporary composer Camille Pépin. The concert opens with Pépin’s Laniakea, an evocative orchestral piece described by Weilerstein as “epic and organic,” which captures the immensity of the Laniakea galaxy supercluster that contains the Milky Way and 100,000 other galaxies... Listen out for shooting stars passing by in the brass!

Acclaimed French cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière then takes the stage for Henri Dutilleux’s mesmerizing Tout un monde lointain... (“A whole distant world…”), his hypnotic 20th-century cello concerto originally written for Mstislav Rostropovich. Its five full-color, highly virtuosic movements were inspired by, and named after, poems from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, including the dreamlike yet fiercely complex scherzo third movement, Houles (“Surges”) that demands an extraordinary command of the instrument. The ONL round out their program with César Franck’s sole symphony and best-known orchestral work, the Symphony in D minor, notable for its cyclical form (Franck's syncopated melodies return and transform throughout the three movements) and the poignantly beautiful cor anglais solo of the second movement.

Photo © Ugo Ponte