Chailly Conducts Ravel - BLU-RAY

Riccardo Chailly pays tribute to Maurice Ravel with a program of waltzes and wild reveries of ecstasy and elegance. He ushers us into Ravel's musical worlds filled with ever-changing colors, scents, and flavors the pulsating three-quarter time of waltzes that reflect just how much the Great War transformed European culture, the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chloé, and the relentless rhythms of Boléro. Magnifique! Riccardo Chailly, who was born in 1953 in Milan, studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, beginning his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he moved to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; starting in 2015, he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since the summer of 2016 he has held the position of Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

Riccardo Chailly conducts the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, MDR Rundfunkchor, Berliner Rundfunkchor, and GewandhausChor with soloists Christiane Oelze and Sarah Connolly.

Abbado's approach to the music of Bruckner is soft and songlike, at times tense and urgent, but constantly filled with warmth of feelingInch - not only the Neue Zurcher Zeitung is full of praise when Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra play Bruckner. Their interpretation of his awe-inspiring Fifth Symphony reflects the composer's burgeoning powers and exquisite compositional artistry. As the Guardian poetically states InchThe composer himself, one suspects, might have leapt to embrace Abbado as an ideal interpreter.