Schumann / Sibelius

Estonian conductor Kristiina Poska is an exceptional specialist in the music of the Baltic countries and, together with Latvian violinist Baiba Skride, winner of the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, will undertake a programme that crosses Europe diagonally, from France to Finland via Germany. This journey will set off with Gabriel Fauré's incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas and Mélisande, a symbolist work that would also spark the imagination of such composers as Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius. Skride will then perform Robert Schumann's grand final work, the Violin Concerto. Written four months before he was committed to a sanatorium, this concerto was concealed for decades by the composer's wife and friends who deemed it a mere product of his madness. Lastly, we will hear Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 5, which is, along with the Second, the most popular and majestic of his symphonic cycle.