Sagrada Familia, Barcelona: Barcelona Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Kazuchi Ono (2015)

This concert is dedicated exclusively to 20th century French music with a special tribute to Maurice Ravel. Three major scores of the composer will be performed: the Concerto for the left hand, the Waltz and the Spanish Rhapsody. The Concerto for the Left Hand is a commissioned work, an occasional score composed at the request of the famous Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had his right arm amputated, and which resonates with all the suffering of human murderous madness. A nationalist but nevertheless an ardent defender of cultural independence (he was one of the few during the First World War to refuse to censor German music), Ravel was seduced by the idea of writing for an interpreter who came from the "enemy ranks" and was marked, like him, by the trenches. From this somewhat crazy gamble of writing for a one-handed piano, Ravel produced a dark and tortured work, compacted into a single movement, far from the bucolic and light image of the impressionist composers. Obviously, this work has an intense visual dimension, and this pianist who uses only his left hand questions us by his rage and obstinacy. This incessant fight between the "diminished" pianist and the orchestra is illustrated by frequent back and forth between the keyboard, filmed in close-ups, and the orchestra, presented in wide shots, imposing in its size and sonic force. Two cameras in the exact axis of the conductor-soloist will report, in fields-counter-fields, the looks between the pianist and the conductor, as if this silent confrontation was contradicting the violence of the facts.