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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Orchestre de Paris / Klaus Mäkelä: Saariaho, R. Strauss, López, Dusapin, Scriabin

The concert hall at the Philharmonie de Paris.

September 8, 2022
221 Avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris, France

Klaus Mäkelä storms the heavens with a program inspired by the Pythagorean conception of the “music of the spheres,” pairing Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra with Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. Good Lord, both in one evening?! But there’s more, folks! For blast-off, Mäkelä has picked Asteroid 4179: Toutatis, Kaija Saariaho’s tribute to Gustav Holst’s universal favorite, The Planets (pun decidedly intended). World premieres by Pascal Dusapin (A Linea, meaning “indentation,” as at the start of a new paragraph) and the Peruvian Jimmy López Bellido (Aino, meaning the “only one”) round out the bill. —Matthew Gurewitsch