We open this new edition of the Festival with the exceptional presence of the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie de Bruxelles, the orchestra of which Alain Altinoglu has been Music Director since 2016.

We begin with the Prelude to Lohengrin, before the great French baritone Stéphane Degout presents one of Mahler's founding cycles: the poignant Songs of a Wandering Companion.

Romantic music par excellence, it will echo the sublime iridescence of the Prelude to Lohengrin, the opera with which Wagner opened the way to a new aesthetic.

In the 2nd half of the programme, Alain Altinoglu will conduct a piece that is close to his heart: César Franck's Symphony in D minor, which he has just recorded with his other favourite orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

This famous Symphony in D minor, a jewel in the crown of the late nineteenth-century repertoire, bears witness to this unprecedented way of organising musical time, both in its form and in its alchemy of instrumental timbres.

R. Wagner, Lohengrin, Prelude
G. Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
C. Franck, Symphony in D minor