Listen in to the Concert Preview! French conductor Stéphane Denève returns for this program of works all premiered in Paris in the early 1920s. Canadian violinist James Ehnes is soloist in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, which begins with an amazingly long-breathed, lyrical melody, and also features a brilliantly exciting scherzo. Stravinsky's Pulcinella and Poulenc's Les Biches were both composed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Stravinsky's score reworks music mostly from the Baroque era for an effect both contemporary and out of time; Les Biches was completely au courant, a light and frothy tableau of a swank party in the south of France. Milhaud's seminal, lively ballet score Creation of the World is an important mainstream example of Paris composers' fascination with American jazz in the years after World War I.