Sir Simon Rattle conducts Ravel, Dutilleux and Delage — With Leonidas Kavakos, Julia Bullock

An all-French program with English flair, as Sir Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra from London’s Barbican Centre, featuring star turns from virtuoso violinist Leonidas Kavakos and extraordinary young soprano Julia Bullock!

The symmetrical program is bookended by two masterworks by Ravel: first, the soul-stirring suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, dedicated to friends lost in World War I; later, to cap the evening, the sweeping harmonies and bucolic splendor of the Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé, one of the composer’s most rapturously romantic works.

Bordering the two Ravel suites are two works by the avant-garde Dutilleux, often considered a spiritual successor to the musically adventurous Ravel: the violin concerto L’arbre des songes (The Tree of Dreams), with a knockout performance by Kavakos, and the methodically unfolding Métaboles, which highlights each section of the orchestra in turn. The glimmering axis of symmetry at the heart of the program is a seldom-heard gem, the Quatre poèmes hindous by Ravel’s own student Delage, interpreted with astonishing clarity and emotion by Bullock, recently praised in the New York Times as “one of the singular artists of her generation.”