Clyne & Mussorgsky

Stéphane Denève, former music director of the Brussels Philharmonic, returns to Brussels, bringing two brand-new works from his new home country, America. He pairs the contemporary music of Kevin Puts and Anna Clyne with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – an iconic masterpiece that Denève has never performed before with the Brussels Philharmonic.

Stéphane Denève has been the music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 2019, based at Powell Hall. When the hall reopened in 2025 after two years of intensive renovations, Kevin Puts, as Composer in Residence, looked ahead to the future. His new song cycle bursts with optimism and grand emotions, honoring Powell Hall as a house for tomorrow.

The European premiere of Puts’ work shares the stage with a world premiere: Anna Clyne wrote a new piece for orchestra and chorus, commissioned by the Brussels Philharmonic, the Cincinnati May Festival, and Radio France. She selected three poems from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch): “Their inherent musicality, rhythm, rhyme, and highly evocative imagery immediately inspired me.” Rilke’s symbolism, rooted in Russian Orthodox liturgy, led Clyne to borrow a harmonic progression from the final movement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, The Great Gate of Kiev.

It is only fitting, then, that Clyne's piece is followed by Mussorgsky’s musical exhibition itself. The original piano suite truly comes alive in Ravel's expert hands: his masterful orchestration brilliantly translates the various paintings, guiding us past a menacing gnome, through playing children in the Parisian Tuileries, all the way to the mighty gate of Kiev.