Sir Simon Rattle conducts Ligeti, Wagner, Rachmaninov, and Strauss — With Kirill Gerstein

Sir Simon Rattle is back at the Verbier Festival! This year, the legendary conductor takes to the Salle des Combins podium once again for a triumphant program with world-renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein and the Verbier Festival Orchestra. The concert opens with Ligeti’s mystical Atmosphères, a seminal work of the “static” music movement in which the colors and timbres of 88 musicians interweave to create a captivating sonic mass. Next up is perhaps one of the most exquisitely beautiful opera introductions ever written, the Act I Prelude of Wagner’s Lohengrin, about which Baudelaire remarked: “I felt myself released from the bonds of gravity, and I rediscovered [...] that extraordinary thrill of pleasure which dwells in high places…” The thrill continues with Rachmaninov’s electrifying Piano Concerto No. 3, one of the most demanding piano works in the repertoire — a challenge to which Gerstein rises with boundless flair and immaculate technique. The evening rounds out with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), an epic, autobiographical musical fresco depicting the glorious exploits of its self-searching protagonist.