Maurice Ravel
Une barque sur l'océan

Olivier Messiaen
Et exspecto resurrectionem

Maurice Ravel
Daphnis et Chloé Suites No. 1 and No. 2

Riccardo Chailly and La Scala: two names and one institution that arouses great emotion, especially when surfing on less frequented routes.

Riccardo Chailly's repertoire has no limits, and his style and sensitivity allow him to tackle this programme with a distinctly French flavour. Ravel's impressionistic, pointillist sonorities cross Messiaen's seemingly distant inspirations: "I have done some [musical] research, but I always try to ensure that this doesn't detract from the quality of the sound. [...] A musical work must be interesting, pleasant to listen to and touching. These are three different qualities", claimed Chailly, formulating the characteristics of a successful composition.

Twentieth-century music had a chronologically uncertain beginning but an unequivocal observatory: Paris. The Parnassians, Symbolists, and promoters of Art Nouveau abandoned the Romantic tendency to highlight the artist's torments; they freed themselves of an expressiveness based on personal visions to devote themselves to the description of ethereal, elitist and refined paradises, in which the detail, the elegant and imaginative arabesque, prevails over form.

This is the case with the beautiful Daphnis et Chloé ballet, whose two Suites are among the most performed pieces in the symphonic repertoire for the colours of their prodigious instrumentation. Dreams of youth, a literary transfiguration of landscapes, and a serene, beautiful and courteous humanity: in conceiving this great score, Ravel seems to draw inspiration from fundamental emotions in his vision of art.