To close this 2024 edition of the Colmar International Festival, Kazuki Yamada brings us some highly colourful pages from the French Romantic repertoire, starting with the Corsaire Overture, a dazzling stroke of genius inspired in Berlioz by his reading of Fenimore Cooper's The Red Corsair.
Saint-Saëns's Violin Concerto No. 3, transcended here by the formidable Ukrainian violinist Valeriy Sokolov, is just as dazzling, a kind of ideal between a display of virtuosity and melodic and emotional richness.
Finally, Bizet's all-too-rare yet brilliant Symphony, composed when the future composer of Carmen was still only 17, will round off this edition with a fireworks display!

Hector Berlioz, Le Corsaire, Overture, Op. 21

Camille Saint-Saëns, Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, Op. 61

Georges Bizet, Symphony in C major