Winner of the 2024 La Maestra competition in Paris and recipient of five additional prizes, conductor Bar Avni is pursuing a very promising career. Born in Israel, she first studied percussion before turning to conducting. She counts Yoav Talmi, Barbara Hannigan and Ayelet Geva as mentors and has assisted conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Klaus Mäkelä and Myung-Whun Chung. Avni is known for her desire to seek out programmes that are off the beaten track.

This is evident in her first recording with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, which combines the music of Charlotte Sohy, Darius Milhaud, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Igor Stravinsky. The programme opens with Sohy’s symphony ‘Grande Guerre’, which was composed in 1914 but only premiered in 2019. Milhaud composed his first of six Petites Symphonies in 1917 while he was secretary to Paul Claudel, French ambassador to Brazil. C. P. E. Bach’s sparkling symphony composed in 1775 precedes the final work by Stravinsky, his first major work composed after he moved to America around 1940, a Symphony in Three Movements... Three movements: the common thread running through the works on this symphonic journey.