Jean-Yves Thibaudet

The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.

After ten years of loyal service at the helm of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Mikko Franck is flying off to new musical horizons. Before bidding farewell, the conductor and the ensemble offer us a final concert, featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

A biopic of Alma Mahler, the wife of composer Gustav Mahler (as well as Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel), and the mistress of Oskar Kokoschka.

Accompanied by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi, French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs the rare ‘Concerto in D flat major, Op. 38’ by Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978), who was one of the Soviet Union’s ‘official’ composers, alongside Prokofiev. Also on the programme: “Vesper” by the Estonian composer Ester Mägi, who passed away in 2021.

Princess Fedora, who is to marry the Count the following day, arrives and sings of her love for him, unaware that the dissolute Count has betrayed her with another woman. The sound of sleigh-bells is heard, and the Count is brought in mortally wounded. Doctors and a priest are summoned, and the servants are questioned. It is proposed that Count Loris Ipanov, a suspected Nihilist sympathiser, was probably the assassin. De Siriex (a diplomat), and Grech (a police inspector) plan an investigation. Fedora swears on the jewelled Byzantine cross she is wearing that Count Andrejevich's death will be avenged.