A season-long focus on French composers, “From Berlioz to Boulez: Color and Sensuality,” traces a nation’s search for a musical identity, from precision of the Renaissance and Baroque to the modernism of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Guest conductor Pablo Heras-Casado will lead the CSO in tribute to Pierre Boulez, who celebrates his 90th birthday in 2015, with November performances featuring his Figures-Doubles-Prismes. In March, Charles Dutoit will return to conduct Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, D’Indy’s Symphony on a French Mountain Air and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No. 2. Dutoit also will conduct a second all-French program featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Lalo’s Concerto in D Minor.

Also in the spring, Baroque specialist Harry Bicket will lead a suite of dances from Rameau’s opera Platée, and Poulenc’s Concert champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra, with Kristian Bezuidenhout as soloist. French native Ludovic Morlot conducts a French-themed program of Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes and Ravel’s La valse, as well as Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand, and Gershwin’s An American in Paris. In June, two Beyond the Score performances round out the French survey with a portrait of Maurice Ravel.