Don Juan
Alain Altinoglu

Strauss, Bortkiewicz, Lekeu

One year almost to the day after Ukraine was dragged into an unscrupulous war, La Monnaie is staging this concert as an expression of its solidarity with the Ukrainian people. First and foremost, we will hear the Piano Concerto No.2 for Left Hand (1924) by the Ukrainian composer Sergei Bortkiewicz, performed here by his compatriot Illia Ovcharenko, but also the melancholic Adagio pour Quatuor d'orchestre (1891), a lament by the Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu.  

In the second part of the concert, the memory of Der Rosenkavalier resonates in two symphonic works by Richard Strauss: on the one hand, Don Juan Op.20 (1888), a fiery and turbulent symphonic poem from his early years, in which he euphorically glorifies the mythical seducer, and on the other hand a transparent, neoclassical, almost bucolic Oboe Concerto in D major (1945), in which La Monnaie oboist Luk Nielandt performs as a soloist.