Karina Gauvin and Les Illuminations - Orchestre Métropolitain

Following an acclaimed visit to the OM’s podium last season, conductor Nicholas Carter returns to lead a concert filled with light. Elgar said that the waterways, the hills and mountains and the blue of the Mediterranean didn’t inspire his concert overture In the South (Alassio) so much as dictate it: a sunny postcard that delivers all the orchestral colours of the work’s playful tableau. In Britten’s Les Illuminations, Karina Gauvin reveals the expressiveness of her voice and all the ambiguity and euphoria of this song cycle with these settings of Rimbaud poems. At the height of his powers, Prokofiev composed a virtuosic and expressive Symphony No. 5 that audiences find pleasant and approachable. With great optimism and a dash of sarcasm, it evokes at times Mahler, at times the composer’s own Cinderella.