For afficionados of Florent Schmitt’s music, the upcoming 2026-27 season of orchestral concerts will include Schmitt compositions that are both familiar and rare. In addition to one of Schmitt’s acknowledged “biggest hits” La Tragédie de Salomé, the featured repertoire includes several works that don’t show up on concert programs very often — Antoine et Cléopâtre and […]
Category Archives: Orchestral Music
“Florent Schmitt’s music is very extravagant and complex, and he often wrote for immense forces — the Symphonie concertante being a prime example. Overall, the piece possesses a very powerful originality …” — Peter Donohoe, English pianist On October 30, 2025, English pianist Peter Donohoe joined the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and its conductor emeritus Yan […]
After decades of obscurity, suddenly both the piano and orchestral versions of Schmitt’s suite receive new recordings – as well as renewed attention from performers. In the 1930s, Florent Schmitt was arguably at the peak of his creative powers. It was a decade that saw a prodigious amount of music come from the composer’s pen […]
For his newest Florent Schmitt Chandos recording (scheduled for release in October 2026), when French conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier was considering contemporaneous compositions to pair with Schmitt’s strikingly modern Symphonie concertante (1931-32), one of his choices might seem curious: Çançunik, Op. 79, dating from 1927-29. Compared to the Symphonie concertante – and indeed to several […]