Concert Programme Autumn 2020 bsolive.com Welcome Welcome once again to the BSO’s autumn It will be interesting to hear how the concert series. I hope you’ve enjoyed the well-known scenes from fairy tales have concerts so far, and are looking forward to been augmented to make the larger, more delving into the plethora of fascinating substantial work. programmes coming up. The Library has been hard at work since July to bring this Saint-Saëns’s Second Symphony will have season’s music together for everyone to the finest examples of the weight of enjoy. Be rest assured, the sheet music has forty-five musicians working together to at least three days without contact before create music. The audience members going in front of the musicians at the first listening in the hall will feel the effect of rehearsal, and the same before it gets sheer air moving, and hopefully this will still sorted after the concert. be felt at home, through the power of myriad microphones, cables and digital “magic”, This week’s offering is entirely French, with until such times when we can all gather glorious melodies, vignettes of beloved again to feel that power together.. stories, and surging orchestral power. It’s a pleasure to work with Thierry Fischer again The BSO still needs all the support that can and welcome him back to Poole. be given so that we may all meet again, so thank you for ‘attending’ this concert, and I Fauré’s Masques et Bergamasques, a hope you enjoy the rest of the season. common favourite, is a light-hearted opener, filled with moments to make you smile and Alastair Simpson tap along, from its syncopated opening Librarian melody to its danceable gavotte. The extended version of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite that is the Ballet almost caught the Library unawares, having blithely got the suite off the shelf! Concert Season Autumn 2020 3 French Delicacies Lighthouse, Poole Fauré Thierry Fischer Wednesday 28 October Masques et Bergamasques Conductor 14’ Amyn Merchant Leader In memory of our friend Ravel Ian Wilson Mother Goose complete Ballet 29’ Saint-Saëns Symphony No.2 23’ All information is correct at the time of going to print. All timings are guidelines only and may differ slightly from actual lengths. Suite: Masques et Bergamasques Gabriel Fauré Born: 12 May 1845 Pamiers, Ariège, France Died: 4 November 1924 Paris 1. Ouverture Fauré is undeniably a great composer; yet he 2. Pastorale remains known through only a fraction of his 3. Menuet substantial output, and it is therefore all too 4. Gavotte easy to misunderstand his true nature and to underestimate his stature. His artistic beliefs centred on, in his own words, “clear thought, formal purity and sobriety”, but only on the most superficial level can he be viewed as a conservative composer, since the subtleties of his harmonies, rhythms and textures create a uniquely expressive intensity and beauty. Masques et Bergamasques was composed in 1918, but much of the original material dates from much earlier. On his own admission Fauré “cobbled together” the music, in which he bodily transposed several earlier pieces to the new context. The main theme of the Ouverture, for instance, described by Reynaldo Hahn as “Mozart imitating Fauré”, was written back in 1869, while other prominent ideas include the song Clair de lune and the celebrated Pavane. As for the title, the word Masque relates to the commission, which came from Prince Albert of Monaco for “a one act lyric divertissement’” while Bergamasque derives from a line in Verlaine’s poem Clair de lune. Terry Barfoot. Repertoire 5 Mother Goose Joseph Maurice Ravel Born: 7 March 1875 Ciboure, nr. Biarritz, France Died: 28 December 1937 Paris 1. Prélude Ravel possessed a natural affinity with 2. First Tableau: Spinning Wheel Dance fantasy worlds of different kinds and the and Scene fairy-tale world of children. His biographer 3. Second Tableau: Pavane of the Roland-Manuel wrote that the “normal Sleeping Beauty reserve and frigidity which normally 4. Interlude characterised him only really left him when 5. Third Tableau: Conversation between in the company of children, young women Beauty and the Beast or kittens”. Such delightful masterpieces as 6. Interlude the magical opera L’enfant et les sortilèges 7. Fourth Tableau: Petit Poucet (The Child and the Sorceries) and Ma mère (Hop-o’-My-Thumb) l’oye (Mother Goose) demonstrate Ravel’s 8. Interlude instinctive feeling for the child’s imaginative 9. Fifth Tableau: Laideronnette, world. Empress of the Pagodas 10. Interlude Mother Goose, subtitled ‘five children’s 11. Sixth Tableau: The Fairy Garden pieces’, was inspired by the children’s stories of Perrault, Comtesse d’Aulnoy and Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and was dedicated to the children of Ravel’s friend Cyprien Godebski. Originally written for piano four- hands (1908-10), Ravel then transcribed it as an orchestral suite (1911), and in the same year expanded it into a ballet score. This involved the addition of two extra movements at the beginning, a re-ordering of the extant ones to create five tableaux, and the composition of short interludes to link them. With a scenario created around the tale of The Sleeping Beauty, the ballet was first performed at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris on 28 January 1912. 6 Repertoire The Prélude was the first addition and seems “He believed he would easily find his way to express in music the time-honoured back by means of his breadcrumbs, which phrase ‘Once up a time’ as fragments of he had scattered as he passed along; but to ideas from the different tableaux are hinted his surprise he could not find a single crumb, at, for instance, hunting horns and birdsong. for the birds had eaten them up.” Without a break, the music continues The lost boy’s wanderings are subtly into the First Tableau and the other newly suggested by the constantly changing time- composed movement, the ‘Dance of the signature and falling back of the melodic line, Spinning Wheel and Scene’. The whirring of the oboe accompanied by muted strings. In the wheel is vividly portrayed in the music as the middle section birdsong is evoked by an old woman sits spinning. In the ‘Scene’, a piccolo, flute and three solo violins. young princess skips into the room, slips and crashes into the wheel pricking her finger Her dream changes during the next interlude and, as the malevolent spell takes effect, to the tale of the Laideronette, Impératrice she falls asleep. des pagodes (‘Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas’), portrayed in the Fifth Tableau. In the Second Tableau, Pavane de la Belle Ravel depicts the empress taking her bath au bois dormant (‘Pavane of the Sleeping to the accompaniment of singing with viols Beauty’), it is the Princess herself in the and lutes. The orchestration of this exotic deepest of sleep who is evoked. Here Ravel piece includes glockenspiel, celesta and creates a striking but dignified atmosphere harp, while Ravel’s use of the pentatonic with the utmost restraint and economy of scale contributes to the oriental flavour. orchestration. The first Interlude leads to the next Tableau, where the Princess dreams A final interlude provides the link into of the Les entretiens de la Belle et la Bête the SixthTableau, Le Jardin féerique (‘The (‘Conversation of Beauty and the Beast’). Enchanted Garden’), one of Ravel’s most In it the two characters are represented eloquent and noble inspirations, in which by an elegant waltz and a grotesque the Prince wakens the Sleeping Beauty contrabassoon solo, before Ravel combines with a kiss, before they walk through the these two melodies. On its return the Beast’s garden towards the fairy-tale castle. Solos theme is heard in ethereal harmonics on a for violin and viola lead into the final majestic solo violin, representing his transformation crescendo, replete with flamboyant writing into his former state as a handsome prince. for glockenspiel, celesta and harp. Another Interlude leads to the Fourth Philip Borg-Wheeler/Andrew Burn Tableau where the Princess dreams of Petit Poucet (‘Hop o’my Thumb’). In the piano version Ravel prefaced the music by a quotation from the famous fairy-tale by Charles Perrault: Repertoire 7 Symphony No.2 Camille Saint-Saëns Born: 9 October 1835 Paris Died: 16 December 1921 Algiers 1. Allegro moderato – Allegro appassionato Saint-Saëns began composing his Second Adagio Symphony, in the key of A minor, during 1858 2. Scherzo: Presto and completed it the following year. It is 3 Prestissimo rarely performed in the concert hall mainly because it is a work of his early twenties when he was still forging his personal voice. Nevertheless, since it abounds with lyricism, deft harmony, and the skilful development of his thematic material, its neglect seems surprising. A child prodigy, Saint-Saëns’ musical talents were first encouraged by his mother, and even more so by his great-aunt Charlotte, who was his first teacher. At the age of thirteen he was admitted into the Paris Conservatoire to study organ and composition; from then on he flourished, enjoying a highly successful career which combined composition, performance (he was both a brilliant organist and pianist) and teaching (Fauré was one of his pupils). 8 Repertoire He left a legacy of works that remain In a canny move, he dedicated the Second core parts of the orchestral and operatic Symphony to the conductor Jules Pasdeloup repertoire: the Third, so called Organ who, by all accounts, had limitations as a Symphony, his concertos for piano, cello conductor, but did perform new music in and violin, as well as another work for his concerts.