NEW YORK—The Orchestre National de Lyon appeared at Carnegie Hall with the help of three talented Americans: Leonard Slatkin, who has been its music director since 2011, and opera stars Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming.
The Orchestra is noted for its playing of music by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) and the program featured the work of this great composer.
The first piece on the program was “Antar,” a suite Ravel put together and re-orchestrated in 1910 from music by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844- 1908). The work was not published and was reconstructed by the Lyon Orchestra with a new addition: Amin Maalouf, best known for writing four librettos for Kaija Saariaho’s operas, was commissioned to write a text.
“Antar” was presented at the concert in an English translation by Matthew Hurt and Sarah Vermande.
