This colourful Sunday morning concert takes its name from a short, gem of a work.

The Pavane couleur du temps was written in 1920 for a string quintet and later, in 1954, arranged for a small orchestra. The piece takes its name from Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Peau d’âne (Donkey Skin), in which a princess, wanting to escape a dreaded marriage, tests her future and unwanted husband by asking for a dress “the colour of time”. The beautiful, romantic lyrical lines singing over the characteristic “walking bass” of a Pavane make this short work a poignant miniature!

Claude Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp was composed in 1915, during the First World War. It is a milestone in 20th-century chamber music, in which the sounds of the instruments in this new trio formation form a unique palette for modern, impressionistic colours. The work has a unique, intimate texture in which instruments alternately evoke lyrical, pastoral and melancholic moods, often in a dreamy atmosphere. The work is more about timbre and texture than dramatic development, with the harp functioning as a subtle foundation rather than just a virtuoso soloist.

This colourful concert concludes with Ernest Chausson’s rarely performed piano trio. It is a youthful, passionate masterpiece in four movements, strongly influenced by his teacher César Franck and Wagnerian chromaticism. It has a dark, cyclical structure, in which themes from the opening movement recur and intense emotions, elegiac melodies and rich, thick textures intermingle. If Debussy’s timbres were more like those of a Monet painting, here we are dealing with the brushstrokes of Van Gogh!