Star pianist Lucas Debargue joins Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse for a program of fire and ice! They begin with Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, whose virtuosic fireworks and extroverted character (along with the composer’s unusual use of the triangle, an instrument he admitted “could shock certain people, especially if it is hit too harshly or imprecisely”) have earned it an eternal place in the pianistic concerto pantheon. The second of the wartime symphonies, Shostakovich’s Eighth received warm accolades at its 1943 premiere before Soviet authorities turned cold on the composer and began to criticize the work. Transporting its listeners from tragedy to triumph, it is one of the greatest symphonic masterpieces of the 20th century, magisterially rendered here by Maestro Sokhiev and the ONCT.

Photo: Tugan Sokhiev © Marco Borggreve / Lucas Debargue © Felix Broede