Mozart, Ravel & Aphrodite Patoulidou: With the NAC Orchestra

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From a lyrical meditation on love and belonging to a symphony of shadow and light, these works of melancholy and nostalgia will leave you feeling grounded and calm. Mozart’s dramatic Symphony No. 40 channels anxiety and intensity—and still finds its way to a finale of ecstatic joy. Soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou’s creativity knows no boundaries—besides her work on the concert stage, she’s also a skilled painter and has sung with metal bands.

Audiences were in shock after Mozart premiered his Symphony No. 40 in 1791. How could this composer, known for music of overwhelming wit and humour, compose a work of such anxiety and turmoil? Listen closely, however, and you’ll discover moments of operatic lyricism and sublime tranquillity emerging beside the dark undercurrents of Mozart’s shadowy symphony. Visionary American conductor David Robertson leads this program in his NAC Orchestra debut.

A heartfelt meditation on love and belonging, Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child follows a series of fantastical visions sung by a mother lulling her child to sleep. Soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou, whose “tenderly beautiful singing is as intoxicating as the scent of delicate spring blossoms” (Klassik Begeistert), brings the Québécois composer’s mesmerizing “long song of solitude” to life in her Southam Hall debut.

Stravinsky’s lively spotlight on winds and brass opens the program, followed by Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, music of mourning and catharsis that rarely leaves a dry eye in the house, while Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) reimagines a 16th-century slow dance with dazzling harmonies and wistful nostalgia.