Paris in the Roaring Twenties. The French surrealistic poet Jean Cocteau and his friends would meet every Saturday in the jazz restaurant ‘Le Boeuf sur le toit’, the place to be for the Parisian artistic avant-garde.

The ‘Saturday Group’ also included the two friends Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honegger. Poulenc, the joyous Catholic, wrote Les Biches for Diaghilev’s famous Ballets russes. His sensuous music won him immediate renown worldwide. The music of Honegger is completely different; his Symphony No. 3 or Symphonie liturgique offers a reflection on the barbarity of human beings during the war. Ravel’s music did not really seem to appeal to the two composers, but his Piano Concerto in G Major charmed them: Ravel – another habitué of the ‘Toit’ – managed to work a jazz beat into this masterpiece.

Flagey, Brussels Philharmonic, Jeugd en Muziek Brussel