Souvenir de Florence

Two days after performing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, Carolin Widmann is joined by five musicians from the Chamber Orchestra of Paris for a concert devoted to the string sextet.

This genre, which Tchaikovsky called "incredibly difficult" and which requires "six independent and homogeneous voices", reveals its darker side in Schulhoff's Sextet.

This composer, still too little known – the Nazi regime erased his name from memory for a long time – was part of the musical avant-gardes of the interwar period. The influence of Schoenberg is evident in this hallucinatory score, which is constantly kept on the edge of tonality.

Tchaikovsky's sextet Souvenir de Florence returns to the light. After a first movement of prodigious vehemence, the reference to Italy, audible in the sunny serenade of the second movement, gives way to fiery melodies inspired by Russian folklore.

Listening keys: an introductory talk will be offered at the start of the concert.