IRONIE & ILLUSION

“Ironie $ Illusion” brings together two facets of courage: the power of imagination and the courage to speak between the lines.

Debussy’s celebrated Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune opens the evening with shimmering colours and an impressionistic dreamscape, before Edgar Moreau turns to Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 – a work alive with wit, sharpness and subtle irony. Living under the pressures of political repression, Shostakovich developed a musical language in which criticism was rarely voiced openly, but instead encoded with remarkable subtlety.

The programme concludes with Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony” – a masterpiece as ingenious as it is immediately appealing. With charm, lightness and playful elegance, it combines classical forms with a distinctly modern voice.

Together with François Leleux and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Edgar Moreau creates an evening that reveals how humour, imagination and musical sophistication can themselves become a form of artistic courage.