Karina Canellakis conducts Ravel, De Raaff, and Janáček

Azure Blue
It is the church bells in the poem*L’Azur*by the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé that inspire Robin de Raaff. This poem will form the basis for a composition dedicated to Pierre Boulez. De Raaff wrote it in 2025 as a tribute to this eminent composer and conductor, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated. The poem centers on the overwhelming blue sky. Azure blue is also the color of the ocean on which Maurice Ravel sets his boat adrift, to music that undulates and glistens, causing the orchestra and the hall to sway.

Cathedral of Sound
From his country home, Leoš Janáček took long walks in the woods: “I felt a cathedral rising from the vast expanse of the forests.” Janáček was inspired to write theGlagolitic Mass, for which he used Old Church Slavonic, a language already in use in his native region of Moravia as early as the ninth century. He composed an energetic, jubilant mass featuring powerful brass fanfares and an impressive organ part. A work that is in good hands with Karina Canellakis, who proved this with her impressive series of Janáček operas in the Matinee.