The first collaboration between Cartier’s nose Mathilde Laurent, the San Francisco Symphony Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, came to fruition this weekend (1-3 March 2023); a performance of Alexander Scriabin’s 1910 symphony, Prometheus, the Poem of Fire.
20 minutes in length, their interpretation of Scriabin’s tone poem was liberating and full of feeling, uniting sound, scent and light to multisensory and monumental effect. It was also cathartic, an antidote to the pandemic years, when we were unable to gather for cocktails, conflabs or concerts (and were afraid of simply breathing in deeply beside our best friends).
