Valery Gergiev conducts Berg and Ravel — With Anja Harteros

The 2020 MPHIL 360° Festival, a journey to 1920s Paris, kicks off with a feast à la française for the ears and eyes as Maestro Valery Gergiev and the esteemed Münchner Philharmoniker perform Debussy’s epoch-making Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, which Boulez considered the starting point of musical modernity. Dynamite soprano Anja Harteros then takes the limelight for an immaculate rendition of Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs—a cycle originally composed for piano and voice before Berg returned to them in his artistic maturity, over two decades later, to give them a full orchestral treatment.

Finally, some of the most evocative music Ravel ever wrote—dubbed “the epitome of Impressionism in music” by Naxos—accompanies the world-class dancers of the Mariinsky Ballet in a new production by Vladimir Varnava. Daphnis et Chloé, originally commissioned for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris, follows the titular couple as the idyllic love of their youth survives jealous flights of fancy, pirate kidnappers, and divine intervention, all culminating in their joyful reunion.