EIF 26: Maxim Emelyanychev & SCO Wind Soloists

Enjoy a programme of 20th-century French chamber music.

Wind soloists from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra explore music from Poulenc, Ravel and Françaix, with their conductor Maxim Emelyanychev on piano.

Francis Poulenc’s chamber music is a beguiling mix of lyrical and frenetic, sombre and playful. Written the year before he died, the sonatas for oboe and clarinet take an occasionally melancholic look back at his musical life, quoting from both early and more recent works. The famous Flute Sonata retains its power to charm, yet is infused with memories of a lost loved one. In contrast, the much earlier Sextet bursts out of the blocks with astonishing, effervescent energy.

Dazzling piano music from Maurice Ravel and Jean Françaix’s bustling ‘Musique de Brasserie’ – a vivid portrait of a busy Parisian restaurant – add to this enthralling, colourful, and thoroughly French concert.  

Presented by Edinburgh International Festival