Since the 2023/24 season, French conductor Pierre Bleuse has been chief conductor of the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain. As the successor to musical greats such as Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös, he now serves as a full-time »guardian of modernism«. Audiences in Hamburg already had the chance to experience the professional violinist during the 2025 »Elbphilharmonie Visions« festival. For »Compact Classics«, Bleuse brings along two landmark works of the 20th century, each conjuring up images, impressions and atmospheres in its own unique way.
What do you hear while sitting alone in New York’s Central Park at night? In Charles Ives’s 1906 tone poem »Central Park in the Dark«, different sound layers – performed by spatially separated groups of musicians – drift past each other: ragtime music from afar, the clatter of horse-drawn carriages, soft string textures weaving a nocturnal soundscape. Together, they form a multi-layered, immersive panorama of a nighttime park scene.
Claude Debussy conjures musical impressions of England, Spain and the awakening of spring in his »Images« for orchestra. Drawing on English gigues, Spanish folk music and French melodies, he paints fleeting sonic pictures. Like Ives, Debussy also offers a dreamlike nocturne in the second movement: »Les parfums de la nuit« (The Scents of the Night). But in the hands of the grand master of orchestral impressionism, all remains suggestion – enchanting, elusive and never fully graspable.
PERFORMERS
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester orchestra
Pierre Bleuse conductor
PROGRAM
Charles Ives
Central Park in the Dark
Claude Debussy
Images for Orchestra
