This program runs approximately 1 hour, 20 minutes and will be performed without intermission.

Transcription

1 Season The Philadelphia Orchestra PNC Bank is pleased to sponsor Opening Night 2008 Saturday, October 4, at 7:00 Charles Dutoit Conductor Martha Argerich Piano Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales I. Modéré II. Assez lent III. Modéré IV. Assez animé V. Presque lent VI. Assez vif VII. Moins vif VIII. Epilogue (Lent) Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10 Allegro brioso Andante assai Allegro scherzando Intermission Musorgsky/ orch. Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition Promenade I. Gnomus Promenade II. The Old Castle Promenade III. Tuileries IV. Bydlo Promenade V. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle VII. Limoges: The Market VIII. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum Cum mortuis in lingua mortua IX. The Hut on Fowl s Legs (Baba Yaga) X. The Great Gate at Kiev This program runs approximately 1 hour, 20 minutes and will be performed without intermission. We are delighted to dedicate this concert, which gives us the very special opportunity to welcome Maestro Charles Dutoit in his new role as chief conductor and artistic adviser of The Philadelphia Orchestra. We send our very best wishes, Ann and Hal Sorgenti

2 Chief conductor and artistic adviser of The Philadelphia Orchestra, beginning in September 2008, as well as artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, beginning in 2009, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world s leading orchestras. Since his debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, Mr. Dutoit has been invited each season to conduct all the major orchestras of the United States. He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, Japan, South America, and Australia. Mr. Dutoit has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony, have garnered more than 40 awards and distinctions. Since 1990 Mr. Dutoit has been artistic director and principal conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra s summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Between 1990 and 1999, he also directed the Orchestra s summer series at the Mann Center, and led them in a series of distinctive recordings. From 1991 to 2001, he was music director of the Orchestre National de France. In 1996 he was appointed principal conductor, and in 1998 music director, of the NHK Symphony in Tokyo. For 25 years (1977 to 2002), Mr. Dutoit was artistic director of the Montreal Symphony. Mr. Dutoit holds honorary doctorates from McGill University, the University of Montreal, and Université Laval. In 1982 he was named Musician of the Year by the Canadian Music Council; in 1988 the same organization awarded him the Canadian Music Council Medal. In 1991 Mr. Dutoit was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1994 the Canadian Conference of the Arts awarded him their Diploma of Honour. In 1995 the government of Québec named him Grand Officier de l Ordre National du Québec, and in 1996 the government of France made him Commandeur de l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also been invested as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country s highest award of merit. Mr. Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his musical training took him to Geneva, Siena, Venice, and Tanglewood, where he worked with Charles Munch. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art, and architecture, Mr. Dutoit has traveled and visited all the nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo.

3 Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She began her piano studies at the age of five with Vicenzo Scaramuzza. In 1955 she moved to Europe with her family, where she studied with Bruno Seidlhofer, Friedrich Gulda, Nikita Magaloff, Mme. Dinu Lipatti, and Stefan Askenase. In 1957 Ms. Argerich won first prizes in the Bolzano and Geneva piano competitions and in 1965 she won the International Chopin Competition. Her large repertoire includes works by Bach and Bartók, Beethoven and Messiaen, as well as Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel, Franck, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, and Tchaikovsky. Ms. Argerich regularly performs with the world s most prestigious orchestras and conductors, and at music festivals in Europe, Japan, and America. Chamber music is a significant part of her musical life and she regularly plays and records with pianists Nelson Freire and Alexandre Rabinovitch, cellist Mischa Maisky, and violinist Gidon Kremer. Ms. Argerich has recorded for the EMI, Sony, Philips, Teldec, and Deutsch Grammophon labels and many of her performances have been broadcasted on television worldwide. She has received Grammy awards for her recordings of piano concertos by Bartók and Prokofiev; Prokofiev s Cinderella with Mikael Pletnev; and, most recently, Beethoven s Second and Third piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Claudio Abbado. Her recent EMI all-shostakovich recording was named a Sunday Times Record of the Year. She has also received the Choc du Monde de la Musique and has been named Deutscher Schallplatten Kritik Artist of the Year and Gramophone Artist of the Year. Since 1998 Ms. Argerich has been artistic director of the Beppu Festival in Japan. In 1999 she created the International Piano Competition and Festival Martha Argerich in Buenos Aires and, in June 2002, the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano. Ms. Argerich was named an Officier de l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1996 and Commandeur de l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 by the French government. Her other distinctions include awards from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Musical America Musician of the Year in 2001, the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, and the Praemium Imperiale by the Japan Art Association. Ms. Argerich made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1976.

4 FRAMING THE PROGRAM Sergei Prokofiev began composing his First Piano Concerto at age 19 while a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. A few years later he triumphantly won first prize playing the work in a piano competition there. The Concerto offers an unusual chance to hear one of the leading Russian composers of the time in all his youthful exuberance. Musorgsky originally wrote his Pictures at an Exhibition as a suite for piano. It was inspired by a grand memorial exhibition in 1874 of paintings and designs by his good friend Viktor Hartmann, who had died suddenly the year before at age 39. The work is best known in the brilliant orchestration by Maurice Ravel from The program opens with another of Ravel s marvelously colorful transformations of a keyboard composition in this case of his own Valses nobles et sentimentales, a collection of seven brief waltzes inspired by Schubert.

5 Parallel Events 1874 Musorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition MUSIC Verdi Requiem LITERATURE Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd ART Renoir La Loge HISTORY First American zoo founded in Philadelphia 1911 Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 MUSIC Strauss Der Rosenkavalier LITERATURE Wharton Ethan Frome ART Braque Man with a Guitar HISTORY Chinese Republic proclaimed

6 Valses nobles et sentimentales Maurice Ravel Born in Ciboure, Lower Pyrenees, March 7, 1875 Died in Paris, December 28, 1937 Deeply moved by works of Debussy from the 1890s, around 1900 Ravel began to find his own answers to the questions about harmony, color, and instrumental texture that the late 19th century had left unresolved. As a new century dawned, so did hopes of a new music, and this impulse found expression in the music of composers as diverse as Elgar and Schoenberg, Puccini and Debussy. In the first years of the decade, Ravel s music began to appear in print for the first time: The publisher Demets brought out elegiac pieces such as the Pavane pour une infante défunte and revolutionary works such as Jeux d eau. Buoyed by these successes, in 1904 the composer wrote Miroirs, a remarkable set of impressionistic piano pieces that some would later compare to the paintings of Monet or Van Gogh. After this he was destined to join Debussy in writing a new chapter in the history of French music. Finding a Future in the Past Three times Ravel had entered the competition for the Prix de Rome 1901, 1902, and 1903 and three times he had failed, achieving in his last year only Third Prize. Finally he dropped out of the Paris Conservatory altogether, and instead became involved in Les Apaches, an informal, vaguely disreputable collection of Parisian aesthetes who met to discuss art, literature, painting, music, history, and any other topic that might arise. It was at meetings of Les Apaches that Ravel tried out some of his more daring new works, often for audiences that included such musicians as Manuel de Falla, M.D. Calvocoressi, and Florent Schmitt. Their unconventional tastes gave Ravel just the creative encouragement he needed to continue on the path that he had set for himself. Ironically, despite early rejections by the musical establishment of his native country, as he matured Ravel found his iconoclastic tendencies becoming tempered by a growing reverence for the past and especially the music of French masters. Eventually, in the 1930s, he would assimilate jazz as well, and its rhythms and harmonies would imbue his music with unique popular inflections that would give courage to later generations of composers compelled to lace their scores with elements of mass culture. A Closer Look One important work from Ravel s first productive period was the set of Valses nobles et sentimentales, written for piano in 1911 and orchestrated for a ballet production shortly afterward. Containing music that the composer would later use for the climax of his beloved orchestral bon-bon La Valse in 1920, this earlier collection of waltzes represents one of Ravel s first attempts to recreate a past music style. The title Valses nobles et sentimentales indicates clearly my intention to write a sequence of waltzes following the example of Schubert, he wrote. In place of the virtuosity that underlies Gaspard de la nuit there is a much more open style of writing that brings the harmonies into sharp focus and reveals the musical outlines. Taking his cue from Schubert, Ravel has infused his Valses with a sort of perfumed nostalgia, juxtaposed with outbursts of biting dissonances and polytonalities. He inscribed the piano score with a quotation from the symbolist poet Henri de Régnier: Le plaisir délicieux et

7 toujours nouveau d une occupation inutile (The delicious and ever-fresh pleasures of a useless occupation). Yet the work s nonchalant ennui cannot mask a certain seriousness. The piano version was first performed in Paris in May 1911 by Louis Albert, the dedicatee, with no attribution of authorship on a program at which audience members were invited to guess the composer. Not many identified the gentle Valses as a work by Ravel, for it went against the avant-garde style by which he was known at the time. One member of the audience, Claude Debussy, recognized it immediately as the work of Ravel. C est l oreille la plus fine que ait jamais existé, he said of the unmistakable sound of his famous rival ( It is the finest ear that has ever existed ). Later, Ravel orchestrated the Valses at the request of Natasha Trouhanova, for a ballet called Adélaïde, ou Le langage des fleurs. Trouhanova s troupe premiered this version in Paris on April 22, The piece consists of seven brief waltzes some less than a minute long and an epilogue. The vigorous, stomping first segment (Mo Modéré déré) gives way to the poignant Assez lent and playful Modéré. The fourth waltz (Assez animé), carefree and scattered, is contraposed with the entreating and inward Presque lent. A quick sixth waltz (Assez vif) introduces a hesitant, tuneful seventh (Moins vif), whose climax foreshadows La Valse. The Epilogue (Lent Lent) serves as a summary of the range of moods and themes touched upon in the previous seven pieces. Paul J. Horsley The Valses nobles et sentimentals was originally composed for piano in 1911 and orchestrated in The Valses nobles were first performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra in November 1943, with Eugene Ormandy. The work was heard most recently in August 2004 with Charles Dutoit in Saratoga. Charles Munch and the Philadelphians recorded the Valses for CBS in 1963 (currently available on Sony Classical s Essential Classics, #SBK 48163). The piece is scored for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drums, tambourine, triangle), celesta, two harps, and strings. The Valses nobles et sentimentales runs approximately 18 minutes in performance.

8 Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat D major, Op. 10 Sergei Prokofiev Born in Sontsovka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891 Died in Moscow, March 5, 1953 Sergei Prokofiev enjoyed a relatively pampered, privileged childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia. His parents quickly recognized his musical gifts, sought expert advice on how best to nurture them, and then arranged private lessons to have them realized. Prokofiev spent his teenage years studying piano, composition, and conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The First Piano Concerto we hear today dates from near the end of his time there. He had already composed a good bit (he tried his hand at writing operas before the age of 10), but considered this piece his first more or less mature work in terms of both conception and realization. From Concerto to Concertino and Back The compositional genesis of the piece can be charted in the composer s engaging diary. He began writing a piano concerto in the summer of 1910, at age 19, but put it aside in the fall to work on other pieces. Although he thought the concerto contained some good ideas, it promised to be exceptionally difficult to play. He therefore decided to go in another direction and by the following spring was composing a much simpler piece, a light, transparent, and uncomplicated concerto that he hoped might be played by fellow students at the Conservatory. Thus, along with his serious, demanding Concerto, he was also writing a light, attractive Concertino, full of joie de vivre. Plans shifted once again as the modest Concertino began to get longer and more technically challenging. This is confirmed in remarks made in a letter from September 1911 by his good friend, the older composer Nikolai Miaskovsky: Prokofiev is working on a charming, lively, and sonorous concertino for piano and orchestra. The piano part is very unusual and difficult, but the material contains a great deal that is fresh and fascinating. In the end Prokofiev opted to merge parts of the original concerto with the lively concertino resulting in his First Piano Concerto, Op. 10. The joie de vivre remains, as does its more modest scale one continuous movement that lasts just over a quarter of an hour but the demands on the soloist are formidable. Prokofiev finished the work in February 1912 and appeared as soloist at the premiere that August in Moscow, performing it 10 days later with another orchestra and conductor in St. Petersburg. He had spent the summer mastering its technical challenges; as he wrote in a letter: The Concerto, by the way, is not at all easy, and I have to play it well. They say the hall in Moscow is bursting with people up to six thousand listeners and since it will be my first appearance with an orchestra I will have to know it cold. The audience response in both cities was enthusiastic, although critical reaction was decidedly mixed, evoking passionate admiration as well as harsh abuse. One critic called the piece musical mud, while a more perceptive observer spotted a great new talent arriving on the scene: Prokofiev may even mark a state in the development of Russian music: the first stage

9 being Glinka and Rubinstein, the second Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, the third Glazunov and Arensky, the fourth Scriabin and and Prokofiev. Why not? A Prize Winner The most famous performance of the Concerto came two years later, in 1914, as Prokofiev was about to graduate from the Conservatory. He had decided that he would try to capture the top honor the Anton Rubinstein Prize in the piano competition and devised an unusual strategy. He would play one of his own concertos, opting in the end for the First because he feared the Second would be thought too outlandish inside the hallowed walls of the Conservatory. As he recounted years later in his autobiography: I spent the winter of working hard at the piano. Instead of a classical concerto, I chose one of my own. While I might not be able to compete successfully in performance of a classical concerto there was a chance that my own might impress the examiners by its novelty of technique; they simply would not be able to judge whether I was playing it well or not! Prokofiev won the top prize over the vehement objections of the Conservatory s director, Alexander Glazunov. As he recounted in his diary: Yes, it was indeed a triumph for me, all the sweeter for having been achieved in my beloved Conservatory, and even more so in that it represented not a pat on the head proper to a model student, but on the contrary the striking out of a new path, my own path, which I had established in defiance of routine and the examination traditions of the Conservatory. In addition to the coveted prize of a grand piano, perhaps even more consequential in the long term was that the composer s mother gave him a trip to London, where he encountered important future collaborators, including the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Prokofiev retained his affection for the First Concerto, which remained a staple in his repertoire. He continued to perform it many times, even after he moved to the West in 1918 in the wake of the Russian Revolution. A Closer Look Consistent with its modest concertino genesis, the piece is in one movement. A buoyant opening theme helps bind the piece together, returning at key moments later in the Concerto. Although the work is played continuously, it can be divided into three principal sections. The opening Allegro brioso is followed by a rather brief Andante assai, a developmental scherzo (Allegro), and then a return of the opening material to conclude. Prokofiev s First Piano Concerto was composed from 1911 to Christopher H. Gibbs The first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Concerto were in February 1945, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, with pianist Hilde Somer. The most recent performance of the work was this past summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, led by Charles Dutoit, with Yuja Wang at the piano.

10 The Concerto is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, and strings, in addition to the piano solo. Performance time is approximately 16 minutes.

11 Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. by Maurice Ravel) Modest Musorgsky Born in Karevo, Russia, March 21, 1839 Died in St. Petersburg, March 28, 1881 We rarely hear Musorgsky s music exactly as he wrote it. Because the composer had difficulties completing projects, particularly large-scale ones, and because his compositional style was viewed as unconventional, supportive contemporaries and later admirers lent a hand. Some finished incomplete works, such as Rimsky-Korsakov did for the opera Khovanshchina, while others edited and recast them in formats considered more palatable, as Rimsky, Shostakovich, and others did for Boris Godunov. The most famous instance is Pictures at an Exhibition, which Musorgsky originally wrote as an innovative piano suite in 1874 but which is best known in Ravel s masterful orchestration. In fact, more than a dozen composers and conductors arranged the piece for orchestra and others transcribed it for various solo instruments or ensembles. The rock group Emerson, Lake, & Palmer even took a stab at the work, adding amplification and lyrics. Requiem for a Friend In July 1873 Musorgsky s good friend Viktor Hartmann, a noted Russian artist, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 39. The following February a memorial exhibition of his works was mounted in St. Petersburg, organized by the critic Vladimir Stasov and the Architects Society. The exhibition of some 400 images inspired Musorgsky to write a piano suite that drew upon what he saw. Since Hartmann had been involved with theater, architecture, design, and painting, and had spent some years living abroad, the range of media used and subjects captured was quite broad. Musorgsky matched this cosmopolitan reach by using titles in Russian, French, Polish, Yiddish, Latin, and Italian. Although most works in the exhibition are now lost, six of the ones that Musorgsky used have survived. Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled, Musorgsky reported in June 1874 to Stasov, his great advocate to whom Pictures is dedicated. The genesis of the opera had been protracted because of rejections and revisions, but it had finally premiered successfully earlier that year. Musorgsky wrote the piano suite in just 22 days: Sounds and ideas have been hanging in the air; I am devouring them and stuffing myself. I barely have time to scribble them onto paper. I am writing the fourth number. The links are good ( On Promenade ). I want to finish it as quickly and securely as I can. My profile can be seen in the interludes. I consider it successful to this point. The titles are curious. Nothing is known about performances of the suite during Musorgsky s lifetime and the work was only published, in a not entirely correct edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, in 1886, five years after the composer s death. At this time as well Michael Touschmaloff, a student of Rimsky s, orchestrated the work for the first time, although he did not include all the pictures and used the promenade only at the beginning rather than as a link among the pieces. There were several other attempts before Ravel s orchestration from 1922, written on a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for concerts in Paris.

12 A Closer Look As Musorgsky noted the Promenade represents the composer himself as he strolls through the exhibition. The theme reappears prominently as an interlude three more times in the work, on each occurrence conveying a somewhat different mood, as if the viewer himself were changing as he moves from picture to picture. (The original piano suite includes the Promenade four more times the cut of the last one is the only significant structural change Ravel made to the original.) The stately Promenade is boldly interrupted by Gnomus, based on a lost image of a toy nutcracker shaped as a grotesque dwarf. After a return of the Promenade comes The Old Castle, which derives from a lost watercolor of a troubadour singing a ballad before an old palace the haunting song is memorably represented by the alto saxophone. After a shortened version of the Promenade the music shifts to one of the scherzo-like movements, here conveying children playing in the Parisian gardens of the Tuileries. This is in stark contrast with the more lugubrious movement that follows, Bydlo, the Polish word for cattle. The Promenade, this time quite brief and more lyrical, bridges to another fleeting scherzo, Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, based on designs Hartmann had created for a ballet production in St. Petersburg. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle is based on two surviving Hartmann sketches, one of a rich Jew, the other poor, from a Polish ghetto. The title, complete with quotation marks, may have been viewed as anti-semitic by Stasov, who replaced it with the more descriptive Two Jews: rich and poor. The rich one is portrayed by a slow, exotically tinged melody, the poor by a rapid muted trumpet. Ravel cut the reprieve of the complete Promenade that returns at the mid-point of the suite and he proceeded without pause to Limoges: The Market, another swift scherzo. The pace slows for Catacombs (Roman sepulcher), referring to the famous burial site under Paris. Hartmann s watercolor shows him holding a lantern as he and two others explore the dark underground realm. The score carries the Latin subscript Speaking to the Dead in a Dead Language as the Promenade theme is weaved into the rich chordal texture. In the manuscript Musorgsky added the remark: Hartmann s creative spirit leads me to the place of skulls, and calls to them the skulls begin to glow faintly from within. The Hut on Fowl s Legs refers to a sketch Hartmann made of the lodging of the folkloric witch Baba Yaga. This leads directly to the monumental finale: The Great Gate at Kiev, based on one of Hartmann s architectural sketches for a never-realized project. A quiet chorale melody comes in the middle before the conclusion that ingeniously incorporates the opening Promenade theme one last time. Christopher H. Gibbs Pictures at an Exhibition was composed in 1874 and orchestrated by Ravel in The first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of Pictures at an Exhibition were in November 1929 with Leopold Stokowski on the podium. Since then the work has been heard frequently, the most recent subscription concerts being in March of this year with Leonard Slatkin leading his own edition of the work. Pictures, in the Ravel orchestration, has been recorded by the Orchestra five times: with Stokowski in 1932 for Bell Telephone Laboratories (excerpts only); with Eugene Ormandy in 1953 and 1966 for CBS and in 1973 for RCA (currently available on RCA s Basic 100, Vol. 68, #68336); and with Riccardo Muti in 1978 for EMI. The Philadelphians have also recorded

13 the work in Lucien Cailliet s orchestration, with Stokowski in 1937 for RCA, and in Stokowski s own orchestration, with that conductor in 1939 for RCA. The work is scored for three flutes (II and III doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, tenor tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, chimes, cymbals, glockenspiel, ratchet, snare drum, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, triangle, whip, and xylophone), two harps, celesta, and strings. Pictures at an Exhibition runs approximately 32 minutes in performance. Program notes All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

14 GENERAL TERMS Chorale: A hymn tune of the German Protestant Church, or one similar in style Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord Contrapuntal: A term that describes the combination of simultaneously sounding musical lines Dissonance: A combination of two or more tones requiring resolution Harmonic: Pertaining to chords and to the theory and practice of harmony Mute: A mechanical device used on musical instruments to muffle the tone Octave: The interval between any two notes that are seven diatonic (non-chromatic) scale degrees apart. Two notes an octave apart are different only in their relative registers (e.g. c-c ; d-d ). Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition. Pavane: A court dance of the early 16th century, probably of Spanish origin Polytonal: The simultaneous use of multiple keys or tonalities in different parts of the musical fabric Scherzo: Literally a joke. Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then developed. In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications. Tonality: The orientation of melodies and harmonies towards a specific pitch or group of pitches THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: Walking speed Animé: Animated Brioso: Spiritedly Lent(o) (o): Slow Modéré: At a moderate tempo Vif: Lively, animated TEMPO MODIFIERS Assai: Much Assez: Somewhat Moins: Less Presque: Almost