Josep Pons conducts Bizet, Ravel and Stravinsky

Josep Pons, music director of the Spanish National Orchestra, conducts at the Auditorium Maurice Ravel a french music programme. With Bizet's venomous Arlesienne and Ravel's Stravinsky's Petrushka, a wind of exoticism blows upon the Orchestre national de Lyon. The French soprano Mireille Delunsch then sings Ravel's mischievous Sheherazade, directly inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights tales.

"The Enchanted Flute"

Darkness soothes and my master sleeps,
Coiffed in a cone-shaped night-bonnet of silk,
With his long nose yellow on his white whiskers.

But I, I'm wakened and roused again,
And I hear from outdoors
The lone song of a flute o'erflowing
At first with sorrow but then with such joy!
An air turning from languishing to frivolous,
Which my own dearest lover plays.
And as I move closer to the window,
To me it's as though each note has come winging
From his flute onto my cheek
Like a mysterious caress.

Tristan Klingsor