Dancing on the Edge

French composer Pascal Dusapin is the first to admit that it’d be crazy to try and re-tell Flann O’Brien’s novel At Swim-Two-Birds in music. Instead, fascinated by the book’s ‘formal and narrative extravagance’, he’s written a double concerto like no other, wildly eccentric and inspired by the larger-than-life musical personalities of soloists Viktoria Mullova and Matthew Barley. Don’t miss one of the premieres of the year: and discover, too, Enescu’s postcard from the Carpathian Mountains and the exuberant, life-affirming symphony that Bohuslav Martinů wrote in the new world – before conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada goes over the edge with Ravel’s deliriously decadent La valse.