Ravel, Adams, Rachmaninov

When Ravel wrote La Valse in 1919, with the war still a recent memory, everyone had had enough of frivolity. The mood in Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony is even starker. The work describes the horror and anguish caused by the testing of the atomic bomb.

But there is also music that is balm for the soul: the ‘Rach 3’, perhaps the greatest piano concerto in the repertoire, shows the other side of human nature, the awe-inspiring deeds of which one is capable – as a composer, a musician and a human being.

Flagey, Brussels Philharmonic