Les Eaux du Monde

From the fountains of Rome to Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, this concert takes us surfing across rivers and oceans, on the waves of the whole world, through crystalline, watery music illustrated live by comics artist Benjamin Flao.

Across its three movements, Debussy's La Mer shows the sea as ever-changing, by turns calm and turbulent, with Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa serving as the frontispiece of the score. More modest in its ambition, Britten's Four Sea Interludes revisit the subject forty years later: taken from Peter Grimes, whose hero is a fisherman, these four marine miniatures depict the ocean at different moments of the day. Rather than a seascape painter, Ottorino Respighi imagines himself as a portraitist of a city: Fountains of Rome is the first panel of a triptych on the emblematic places of the Italian capital. Here, four fountains, from the Trevi Fountain at noon to the Villa Medici fountain at nightfall.

Production Philharmonie de Paris

Cast Orchestre du CRR de Paris - Ida Rubinstein

Pierre-Michel Durand, conductor

Benjamin Flao, live drawing