RAVEL. Daphnis et Chloé: Suites Pavane pour une infante défunte Alborado del gracioso Rapsodie espagnole

Transcription

1 Eloq uence RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé: Suites Pavane pour une infante défunte Alborado del gracioso Rapsodie espagnole Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam Bernard Haitink

2 MAURICE RAVEL ( ) Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 1 1 I Nocturne II Interlude III Danse guerrière 3 53 Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2 4 I Lever du jour II Pantomime III Danse générale Pavane pour une infante défunte Alborado del gracioso 7 22 Rapsodie espagnole 9 I Prélude à la nuit II Malagueña 2 01! III Habanera 2 IV Feria 6 24 Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam Bernard Haitink Total timing: 56 58

3 Maurice Ravel s ballet Daphnis et Chloé is based on a pastoral romance written by the Greek poet Longus in the third century A.D., or possibly later. In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes, approached Ravel about composing music for a ballet based on this subject. The composer acquainted himself with it in a French translation, but it was choreographer Mikhail Fokine who was primarily responsible for writing the ballet s scenario, which omits several episodes found in Longus s original. Ravel claimed that it was not his intention to reproduce ancient Greece with historical accuracy, but rather to recreate it as it had appeared in his dreams. In the previous century, ballets had been comprised of a series of scenes and dances, largely disconnected and musically unrelated to one another. In contrast, Ravel approached the score to Daphnis symphonically, using a limited number of themes which would be developed according to a rigorously worked out schema. The ballet, set on the island of Lesbos, tells the story of Daphnis, a desirable young goatherd, and the shepherdess Chloé, whom he inarticulately loves. Dorcon also desires Chloé, and so the two men compete in a dancing contest. The clumsy Dorcon is decisively bested and is driven off amidst the derisive laughter of the spectators. Now Daphnis is approached by the seductive Lyceion, who dances suggestively for Daphnis. He pays little attention and she gives up in frustration. Suddenly, a band of pirates invades the island and bears off Chloé. Daphnis finds her sandal and, fearing the worst, despairs. In the pirates camp, Chloé is ordered to dance by the pirate chief, who is inflamed with desire. Satyrs and fauns appear, and then, to the peal of thunder, the god Pan himself. The terrified pirates run off, leaving Chloé behind. She is reunited with Daphnis. An old shepherd tells the story of how Pan, in love with but rejected by the nymph Syrinx, fashioned a flute from reeds. It was in memory of Syrinx that Pan saved Chloé. The shepherd s tale is re-enacted. Chloé falls into Daphnis s arms, and he pledges himself to her. Bacchanites, shaking tambourines, rush onto the stage and the ballet comes to an exciting conclusion with a celebration of life and love. Given his care over the score s construction, it is a little surprising that Ravel disrupted it by creating two concert suites of excerpts. The First Suite dates from 1911, more than a year before the complete ballet was premiered. It is by far the less frequently performed and recorded of the two suites. Its music comes from the middle section of the ballet. In the Nocturne, three nymphs come down from their pedestals and comfort Daphnis, who is distraught over Chloé s disappearance. The mysterious Interlude prefaces the scene in the pirates camp, and their uncouth revelries are depicted in the Danse guerrière that closes the suite. The Second Suite was created after the ballet s premiere and includes music from the last third of the ballet. Dawn breaks rapturously around the sleeping Daphnis ( Lever du jour ); soon reunited with Chloé, they re-enact the story of Pan and Syrinx ( Pantomime ) and the suite, like the ballet, ends with bacchanalian joy ( Danse générale ). Several of Ravel s orchestral works are his own arrangements of music he had originally composed for solo piano. Such is the case with Alborada del gracioso (The Fool s Morning Song), orchestrated in 1918 and originally part of his piano suite Miroirs some fifteen years earlier. The unmistakably Spanish fool in this work is no idiot, but rather a jester, or perhaps a clever (or pathetic) buffoon, such as one finds in the plays of Shakespeare. His morning song is, like the French aubade, a serenade sung to his beloved at sunrise. The original work presents daunting challenges to pianists in the form of rapidly repeated notes and finger-punishing glissandos. In the orchestral version, the difficulties are divided among many musicians, but in so doing, hardly reduced. Here, it is the bassoon who does the dolorous singing, suggesting that perhaps we are dealing with love of the unrequited variety. It is left to the rest of the orchestra to fill in the background, and what a background it is, filled with the fool s frantic strumming on his guitar, and the exotic colour and light of the work s Spanish setting. The Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Infanta, or more often, a Dead Princess) also originated as a piano work. It is a common mistake among amateur pianists the piano original is not terribly difficult, at least in terms of technical demands to play the Pavane too funereally. (Ravel famously told a well-meaning student that he had composed a pavane for a dead infanta, not a dead pavane for an infanta.) Ravel invites us to look through a leaded window at a scene from the past, and the harmonies, ever so tenderly curdled by the composer, gently suggest that we should keep our distance. Ravel s orchestration dates from Rapsodie espagnole began as a work for two

4 pianos, but the orchestral version followed the piano original almost immediately. (The exception is the Habanera, which dates back to 1895.) Ravel composed several works with a Spanish flavour: in addition to the Rapsodie espagnole, there is his opera L Heure espagnole, Boléro and the Pièce en forme de Habanera. Although Ravel only briefly visited Spain, his Basque mother preferred speaking Spanish to French, and he himself was born not far from the Spanish border. This goes to show that one need not be Spanish to write typically Spanish music, just as one need not be a sailor or a fisherman in the case of Claude Debussy to write La Mer! The opening Prélude à la nuit (Prelude at night) is Ravel at his most Impressionistic and Debussylike. The Malagueña dark, but with violent bursts of colour also seems to be set at night, perhaps in a city tavern far from the tourist trade. The Habanera is sultry yet halting, with a seductive quality that might be called feline. It is only in the final Feria that daylight streams in, creating a virtual orgy of violently festive sensations. In his biography of the composer, Burnett James writes, Despite the warmth and subtle colouration all through, the typical Ravel purity of line and clarity of texture are preserved in toto. If the heart is warm, the head is cool, the hand directed with the skill of a surgeon s scalpel. Bernard Haitink (b. 1929) was principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra between 1963 and 1988, and he was named its Conductor Laureate in His relationship with the orchestra began in his childhood, when he was taken to concerts conducted by Willem Mengelberg. He first appeared with the orchestra in November 1956, when he substituted for an ailing Carlo Maria Giulini. His first recording with the Concertgebouw Dvořák s Seventh Symphony came three years later. Haitink s repertoire was and continues to be broad, yet he has recorded many works more than once sometimes with the Concertgebouw and sometimes with other orchestras. Haitink would return to these Ravel works, recording them for a second time with the Concertgebouw and then recording some yet again with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for whom he was principal guest conductor between 1995 and The conductor s decades-long partnership with the Concertgebouw has produced musically indelible results, however, and many collectors will welcome the return of these older recordings, previously not generally available on CD, to the catalogue. Raymond Tuttle Recordings: Grotezaal, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 1961 (Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2, Pavane, Alborado, Rapsodie espagnole), September 1971 (Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 1) Remastering: Digital Compact Disc Mastering, Sydney, Australia Cover image: Pierre Auguste Cot, Le Tempête (The Storm) [1880] oil on canvas Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art direction: Chilu Tong Booklet editor: Bruce Raggatt

5