Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online

Transcription

1 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online Classic FM Series Boléro Thursday 28 February pm Friday 1 March pm Sponsored by Investec French Music Throughout the ages French music has conveyed a distinct national character. Marked by its refinement, superb craftsmanship and subtle colorations, France s music is a scintillating musical legacy, an antidote to the often heavier fare of the Austro-German tradition. Conservative though much French music has been, as in the political life of that country, conservatism has also led to radicalism. This creative tension between the two poles is fascinatingly typified by the various works in this concert, works all written by Paris-based composers in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring pieces by three of France s finest female musical voices, the concert also takes in the understated urbanity of Erik Satie, the vibrant sound-world of his disciple Darius Milhaud and the superbly scored concision of Maurice Ravel s famous Boléro. The notion that French music lacks variety a charge sometimes made is tonight completely and joyfully dispelled. LILI BOULANGER ( ) D un matin de printemps Born into a highly musical family (her sister Nadia was also a talented composer), Lili Boulanger became the first female winner of the Paris Conservatoire s coveted Grand Prix de Rome. A long and successful career seemed in prospect for Lili, yet constant ill

2 health led to her tragically early death at the age of just 24. D un matin de printemps ( One Spring Morning ) was originally composed in 1917 as a duet for violin and piano. After adapting the piece for various instrumental combinations, just before her death Boulanger transformed it into a symphonic poem. This deftly orchestrated work is, as its title suggests, a vivid portrayal of the sights, sounds and joys of spring, right up to its wonderfully quirky ending. GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE ( ) Ballade for piano and orchestra Germaine Tailleferre (original name Taillefesse, altered due to the unfortunate anatomical meaning of its second syllable) was born near Paris before going on to study at the Paris Conservatoire and privately with Ravel. During the 1920s Tailleferre became a member of a musical group known as Les Six (a group that also included Darius Milhaud). Les Six wanted to break with what they regarded as the fusty cultural past. To do this they embraced and celebrated all aspects of modernity and popular culture, particularly cabaret, jazz and music hall. As this highly graceful piece (1920) displays, however, Tailleferre s adherence to the iconoclastic ideals of the group was hardly strict; instead, as Nicholas Slominsky wrote of Tailleferre s music, it is pleasingly, teasingly modernistic. ERIK SATIE ( ) Gymnopédies No.1 & No.3 orchestrated by Claude Debussy ( ) Not so much the godfather of Les Six as its eccentric uncle, Erik Satie certainly broke with tradition. His ballet score Parade (1917), for instance, features gunshots, sirens and a typewriter. But there was another side to Satie s radicalism: music of exquisite simplicity and pure Gallic charm. No better examples of this can be found than these two Gymnopédies (1888), both

3 lovingly orchestrated by Satie s great friend and frequent diningpartner Claude Debussy. DARIUS MILHAUD ( ) Le boeuf sur le toit: Suite A man of many parts, Milhaud spent the last two years of the First World War on a diplomatic mission in Brazil. Here he regularly enjoyed the teeming and very musical nightlife of Rio de Janeiro, receiving first-hand lessons in how art and pop motifs could sit side-by-side. One happy outcome of his South American sojourn was his score for Jean Cocteau s surrealist ballet Le boeuf sur le toit ( The Ox on the Roof ). Cocteau, something of a selfappointed spokesman for Les Six, had already collaborated with Satie on Parade and Le boeuf sur le toit is an equally zany affair. Set in a bar and featuring a cast that includes a bookmaker, a dwarf, a cross-dressing woman, a boxer and a policeman (who is decapitated by an overhead fan before being revived), this pantomime-farce received its premiere at Paris s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in February The evening also featured premieres of works by Satie and two Les Six members, Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric. In the following year Milhaud s ballet was to lend its name to a newly-opened Parisian bar where Cocteau, Les Six and their coterie of bohemians would wine, dine and generally make merry. One of Milhaud s best-loved works, it is a quite brilliant showcase that features a string of genuine Brazilian tunes, among them one titled The Ox on the Roof. GEORGES BIZET ( ) L Arlésienne: Suite No.1 Prélude Minuet Adagietto Carillon

4 Bizet was a child prodigy who began his studies at the Paris Conservatoire when he was just ten. After winning the Conservatoire s Prix de Rome he stayed three years in the Italian capital, though the rest of his short life was spent in Paris where a number of his operas such as The Pearl Fishers gained a modest degree of popularity. His final and most famous opera Carmen was badly received at the time and its severe critical reception broke the sensitive Bizet s spirit and health (the opera was described as vile, contemptible, obscene and even criminal ). He died just four months after its premiere having suffered two heart attacks. Had he lived just a few months more he would have witnessed his much-derided Carmen begin to triumph. The premiere of L Arlésienne, a play by the popular writer Alphonse Daudet for which Bizet wrote the incidental music, took place on 1 October It was a fiasco and Daudet never again wrote for the stage. However, just forty days later Bizet unveiled this suite of orchestral numbers from his score at a so-called Concert populaire. The public simply loved it and Bizet went on to re-use parts of it in Carmen. The final section of the first movement features a wistful saxophone solo. Having been invented in the early 1840s by the Belgian Adolphe Sax, it was instrument very much coming into vogue during Bizet s lifetime. CÉCILE CHAMINADE ( ) Flute Concertino in D major In the early twentieth century the pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade was something of a celebrity. Some of her piano pieces sold 6000 copies a year and she even had a perfume named after her, sold with copies of her portrait. In the USA her recitals of her own works were particularly well received and clubs were established for the promotion of her music. Though she was sometimes dismissed as a composer of lightweight salon music, she produced a number of more serious works, including this charming Concertino.

5 There is an intriguing, if apocryphal, back-story to the piece. According to the tale Chaminade composed the work for her exlover, a professional flautist, after he had left her to marry another woman. Having written a work she regarded as too fiendishly difficult to play, Chaminade gate-crashed her former paramour s wedding and presented the score to him. A few days later she received a letter from the flautist s new mother-in-law thanking her for her musical offering. On the back of the missive, however, was a death threat! Facts often ruin a good story and the more mundane truth is that Chaminade s Concertino (1902) was the result of a commission from the Paris Conservatoire who required a test piece for flute students. Accordingly it is technically challenging for the soloist, though its sheer freshness and vitality distance it from any taint of arid academicism. MAURICE RAVEL ( ) Boléro Sometime after receiving a commission for a ballet score from the Russian ballerina, patron and director, Ida Rubenstein, Ravel was idly playing on the piano when he chanced upon a particularly catchy tune. He then played it to a friend, promising to write a piece in which he simply repeated it, gradually increasing the size of the orchestra as he did so. The result was a ballet called Boléro, probably the most famous piece of French Spanish music ever written. In it Ravel casts the side drum in the role of master of ceremonies as it taps out the characteristic dance rhythm of the Spanish Boléro time and time again. It received its first performance at the Paris Opera in November Because of its repetitive nature the piece had its critics. At the premiere there were shouts of Rubbish! and the English composer and author Constant Lambert commented: There is a definite limit to the length of time a composer can go on writing in one dance rhythm (this limit is obviously reached by Ravel

6 towards the end of La Valse [another dance-inspired Ravel piece] and towards the beginning of Boléro). Yet despite such sniping, the work quickly became a success something that amazed the composer, who didn t much like his creation and who had expected orchestras to refuse to play it. How wrong he was! Programme notes by Anthony Bateman 2018