Lionel Bringuier conducts Ravel, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky — With Alexander Gavrylyuk

In the year of Maurice Ravel's 150th birthday anniversary, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and their next Music Director, Lionel Bringuier, perform two of the transcriptions that best exemplify Ravel's extraordinary talents as an orchestrator — and join virtuoso pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk for a fiery rendition of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3! Ravel's own Valses nobles et sentimentales, inspired more in name than in spirit by Schubert's Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales from a century earlier, reclaim a genre that had become passé by the early 20th century, offering some of Ravel's most elegant and sophisticated harmonies; his transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition, effortlessly evocative and thoroughly majestic, has eclipsed Mussorgsky's original piano score in popularity. Prokofiev's beloved Third Piano Concerto, punctuated by virtuosic passages that evoke both whimsy and gravitas, gets a lively reworking in the hands of the Gavrylyuk, the Ukrainian-born Australian pianist who has won numerous competitions and won widespread acclaim for his many recordings — including the full cycle of Prokofiev concertos with Vladimir Ashkenazy.