Soprano Karita Mattila, star of the world’s foremost opera houses, and cellist Anssi Karttunen play a piece composed especially for them: the magically surreal Mirage by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Mattila adds a Sibelius tone poem inspired by Finnish mythology, and Karttunen performs Schelomo, a passionate piece portraying the wise Hebrew king, Solomon. The concert concludes with Ravel’s La Valse which the composer decribed as "... a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz... the mad whirl of some fantastic and fateful carousel."