Too rarely performed in concert, Béla Bartók’s Cantata Profana, his only large-scale composition for choir and orchestra, carries a profound message of universality. Based on a popular Romanian ballad, it exalts, through the metamorphosis of nine hunter’s sons into majestic stags, their belonging to the animal kingdom and the vanity of the human: put to the sword by their father, they don’t want to return to their parents; their wild life is too beautiful, too pure and abundant. A pure summit of beauty with tree-like writing.

“The deer calls for fresh water”, the first part of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42 , may well have inspired Bartók’s masterpiece, the same animal singing of the treasure of spring water.

Under Pierre Fouchenneret’s incandescent bow, in counterpoint: Bartók’s First Rhapsodyand Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor. The violin is a wild instrument, and a deep forest one too!

Béla Bartók, Rhapsody for violin and orchestra No. 1
Felix Mendelssohn
Psalm 42
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E minor
Béla Bartók, Cantata Profana

Orchestre de chambre de Genève
Aedes
Pierre Fouchenneret, violin
Raphaël Merlin, conductor