- 1-1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Script for NYP 19-07, Oh, you so French (INSERT NATIONAL UNDERWRITING CREDIT #1 (THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER TO "X") AB: And this week...(x) (MUSIC EXAMPLE) AB: This is Alec Baldwin. I hope that you ll listen with me as we feature recordings of Debussy s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Ravel s Noble and Sentimental Waltzes. We ll also have a double-dose of Berlioz with Harold in Italy and his song-cycle, Summer Nights. Sir Colin David, Kurt Masur, Pierre Boulez and Leonard Bernstein will all conduct the New York Philharmonic This Week. We have a program dedicated to French music. (SLIGHT PAUSE) AB: Once, while evaluating himself and his compositional tendencies, Berlioz wrote that, "The prevailing characteristics of my music are passionate expression, intense ardor, rhythmic animation, and unexpected turns."
- 2-22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40...And Berlioz was pretty close to the mark in that assessment, as we'll hear in the opening work on our program, the song-cycle, Les nuits d'été. These songs are considered to be among the most important and most modern orchestral-song settings to pre-date Mahler. Originally scored for piano in 1834, Berlioz chose texts by the French Romantic poet, Théophile Gautier. Roughly a decade later, he orchestrated the songs and dedicated them to various singers who caught his fancy for one reason or another over the years. And about another decade after that...the work was actually published. AB: The songs that make up the cycle are as follows: Villanelle, which remarks, "When the season changes and the cold weather has gone,...say to me in your soft voice: Forever!" 41 42 43 44
- 3-45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 AB: Next comes The Specter of the Rose which is followed by the lament, On the Lagoons. The Fourth song, "Absence" begins, "Come back, come back my beloved: Like a flower away from the sun the flower of my life is closed up away from your warm smile." That is followed by In the Graveyard, which is sub-titled, Clair de lune or Moonlight...and the cycle concludes with the song, The Unknown Island: "Tell me, young beauty, where do you want to go? The breeze is getting up." (APPLAUSE) And now, to open our program, here are Les nuites d'été--summer Nights by Hector Berlioz. Ian Bostridge is the tenor and Colin Davis conducts the New York Philharmonic: (MUSIC: Berlioz) 35:20 (APPLAUSE) 64 65 66
- 4-67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 AB: Summer Nights--Les nuites d'été by Hector Berlioz. Ian Bostridge was the tenor and the New York Philharmonic was conducted by Colin Davis. The recording is something of a collector s item now as it was one of the orchestra s first direct-to-digital offerings on Deutsche Grammophon. (SLIGHT PAUSE) AB: Claude Debussy s music was shaped as much by artistic and literary currents of the 1890s as it was by his musical training. It was thus no accident that one of his earliest masterpieces was based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, titled The Afternoon of a Faun. The musical cadences of Mallarmé s verse with its strong, sensuous appeal and purposely blurred descriptions appealed strongly to Debussy. The words are assumed to be the monologue of a faun, the rural deity of Roman mythology who was part man, part goat. In his Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun from 1905, Debussy virtually reinvented the orchestra, finding new harmonies, new rhythms, and new ways of ordering events. He thereby created a lush, sensual sound-world that had not been heard before.
- 5-93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 AB: Let s hear this music now. Kurt Masur conducts the New York Philharmonic. (MUSIC) AB: Music of Claude Debussy on the New York Philharmonic This Week. That was the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The New York Philharmonic was conducted by Kurt Masur. (SLIGHT PAUSE) AB: Of his Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, Maurice Ravel wrote that the title quote,...sufficiently indicates my intention of writing a cycle of waltzes after the example of Schubert." Like Beethoven, Ravel was a pianist. He also composed at the piano and introduced many of his innovations in works for the piano. And as an expert orchestrator, he was often able to carry over the freshness, flexibility, and transparency of his piano scores into orchestral versions of the same material. 113 114
- 6-115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 AB: Ravel introduced the piano version of his Noble and Sentimental Waltzes in 1911, at a concert for the Independence Society -- the more radical of two associations for living French composers at the time. This group produced concerts of new music in which the composers' names were omitted from the programs, and the audience was invited to guess who wrote what. As the story goes, the audience (if by a slim majority) guessed correctly and attributed this work to Ravel. Ravel orchestrated this piece in a mere 15 days in March, 1912 at the request of the ballerina Natalia Trouhanova. She was seeking to premiere four ballets by four contemporary composers. Thus, the piece was premiered in its orchestral version as the ballet, Adelaide or The Language of Flowers in April that same year. While the ballet has more or less vanished into obscurity, Ravel s stylish and evocative score continues to charm concert audiences. Let s listen as Pierre Boulez conducts the New York Philharmonic. (MUSIC)
- 7-139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 AB: Noble and Sentimental Waltzes by Maurice Ravel. The New York Philharmonic was conducted by Pierre Boulez. In a moment, our broadcast will conclude as it ended with music of Berlioz. I m Alec Baldwin and you re listening to The New York Philharmonic This Week. (ID) AB: In a letter to Nestor Koukolnik dating back to April of 1845, Mikhail Glinka, called by some, the father of Russian Music, noted that among the compositions of Berlioz he had heard, The March of the Pilgrims from Harold in Italy was among his favorites. Glinka wrote to Koukolnik quote, All these pages have produced an indescribable impression on me. At the moment, I have several unpublished manuscripts by Berlioz, which I am studying with unmixed pleasure. In his memoirs, the Berlioz often alluded to the influence of Byron on his own thoughts and ideas, referring to himself as something of a Byronic Romantic Outsider.
- 8-162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 AB: Harold in Italy came about as a response to a commission by none other than Nicolo Paganini in 1834. It seems that the Italian virtuoso was anxious to show off his Stradivarius viola in what he hoped would be a dazzling new concerto. Although Harold in Italy is about as close as Berlioz ever came to writing one, the work is really better cataloged as the composer s second symphony. In fact, Paganini never performed the work, assessing some portions of the score as too full of rests and still others as unyielding. AB: While Byron s verses certainly stood as an inspiration to Berlioz in the composition of Harold in Italy, the musical depictions are not actually taken from Byron. Moreover, Harold in Italy serves as a sort of autobiography for the composer. Whereas his earlier work, Symphonie Fantastique represented a look inward for Berlioz, Harold in Italy is more an expression of his experiences. And it very much points to the kind of self-conscious Romanticism to which he and other artists of his day subscribed. 186
- 9-187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 AB: Harold in Italy is in four movements: Harold in the Mountains, the popular March of the Pilgrims, Serenade of an Abruzzi mountaineer to his mistress, and Orgy of the Brigands. (APPLAUSE UP AND UNDER) AB: And now we hear Harold in Italy by Berlioz. William Lincer is the violist and Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic. (MUSIC) AB: Music of Berlioz. That was Harold in Italy. The New York Philharmonic was conducted by Leonard Bernstein and our musical Harold, was violist William Lincer. I m Alec Baldwin and you re listening ot the New York Philharmonic This Week. 202 203 204 205 206 207
- 10-208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 PROMO for 19-08 AB: Joyce Yang is the soloist in Falla s Nights in the Gardens of Spain on our next Philharmonic broadcast. This is Alec Baldwin. Please join me for a program that will also include music from Massenet s Le Cid and Virginie Verrez as soloist in The Three-Cornered Hat. Bramwell Tovey will conduct the New York Philharmonic This Week.