“A sixty-minute musical geyser” is how Zoltán Kodály described Bluebeard’s Castle, the only opera written by his friend Béla Bartók. Inspired by his discovery of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, this early work (1911) is nonetheless profoundly Bartókian and Hungarian. Bartók’s free adaptation of Perrault’s tale is a fascinating and profound psychoanalytic journey. Musically the score is highly inventive and original, ideal for penetrating Bartók’s rich musical universe. All the more so as in the roles of Bluebeard and Judith we have the privilege of welcoming two artists who, to date, are considered the quintessential specialists of these roles. 

Barber began writing his Violin Concerto in 1939 in a situation of panic: the declaration of war. This event totally and irrevocably transformed the character of the piece: its generous lyricism and quasi Mozartian charm conceals in certain passages a certain melancholy or bitterness which are not easily detectable in the initial radiant theme. Since 2008 Gil Shaham has been exploring with world famous conductors and orchestras the concertos written during the troubled 1930s in his project Violin Concertos of the 1930s, with the aim of detecting a particular echo, but above all because they are his favourite works.