The Sinfonieorchester Basel is opening the new season with a modern classic. For his composition Intégrales, French visionary and sound researcher Edgard Varèse brought together fourteen different percussion instruments – giving rise to a unique space-sound experience. The three works in the opening concert show how different musical pieces can sound, even when they were composed at roughly the same time. In Intégrales the avant-garde Varèse transfers his vision of space-sound, inspired by synthetic music, to a conventional concert line-up, whereas the 3rd movement of the traditionalist Respighi's Pines of Rome features the recorded song of a nightingale. With the Fountains of Rome and the Pines of Rome, the Sinfonieorchester Basel invites you to join it on a stroll though the Eternal City. On the way you will pause at the Trevi Fountain, wander past children at play – and finally arrive at the catacombs. Can you hear the song of the nightingale, or legionaries on the march? Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini also brings new and traditional worlds of sound together, when Cameron Carpenter plays his digitally enhanced organ. For the last three years this world-famous musician has been travelling from one concert hall to the next with his International Touring Organ. The Rhapsody, which was composed on Lake Lucerne, is a musical depiction of the violinist Paganini dancing with the devil.