Le Lion de Belfort

Le Lion de Belfort was composed for the official inauguration of the sculpture Le Lion de Belfort: an enormous red sandstone lion that dominates the landscape of the French city of Belfort. This 22 metre long and 11 metre high lion symbolises the heroic French resistance during the Prussian siege of Belfort in 1870-1871. The composer added a narrator and three-part choir to the concert band instrumentation, who utilise texts written specially for the occasion by Jean Ehret.The work’s première took place at the inauguration of Le Lion de Belfort on 28 November 2010, 130 years after sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) completed the statue.