Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bald Mountain orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov portrays a witches Sabbath on the dark eve of St. John’s Day. From the outset, Ravel’s Shéhérazade sweeps us away to a fairy-tale world while the delicate and emotionally expressive enunciation of the French soprano, Karen Vourc’h, is perfect to convey this idealised vision of the East. Our founding conductor will then interpret one of his most cherished works, Scheherazade, by Rimsky-Korsakov. Written in 1888, the work represents a masterpiece of the symphonic repertoire and an unsurpassable pinnacle of musical Orientalism, the composer having drawn his inspiration from the One Thousand and One Nights, which underwent a revival in Russia during the 19^th century.