Alderley Edge Orchestra May 2016
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) - Ma mère l'Oye (‘Mother Goose’) (1910-11)
Maurice Ravel wrote his Ma mère l'Oye (‘Mother Goose’) suite originally as a duet for the two young children of the Godebski family, close friends with whom he stayed at their Fontainebleu residence in 1910. He orchestrated the work the next year and later for ballet performance, employing all his consummate skill as orchestrator to create the most delicate and distinctive sounds. Under the subtitle Cinq pièces enfantines, he variously provided the following guide to the music:
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty – Florine [a princess] falls asleep [having pricked a finger on an old woman’s spindle]. The old woman now stands erect, throws off her filthy cape, and appears in the sumptuous clothing and charming features of the Good Fairy. Two little boys appear. The fairy entrusts them with guarding Florine and granting her pleasant dreams.
Tom Thumb – A forest, at nightfall. The woodcutter’s seven children enter. Tom Thumb crumbles a piece of bread. He looks about but cannot find any houses. The children cry. Tom Thumb reassures them by showing them the bread which he has strewn along their path [in order to find their way home]. They lie down and fall asleep. Birds pass and eat all of the bread. Upon awakening, the children no longer find any crumbs, and they depart sadly.
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas – A tent draped in Chinese style. Male and female pagoda attendants enter. Laideronnette appears in the Chinese style of Boucher. A green serpent crawls amorously at her side.
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast – Beauty enters. Taking her mirror, she powders herself. The Beast enters. Beauty notices him and remains petrified. With horror, she rejects the declarations of the Beast, who falls at her feet, sobbing. Reassured, Beauty makes fun of him coquettishly. The Beast falls down faint with despair. Touched by his great love, Beauty raises him up again and accords him her hand. But before her is a prince more handsome than Eros, who thanks her for having ended his enchantment.
The Enchanted Garden Dawn – Birds are singing. Prince Charming enters, led by a cupid. He notices the sleeping Princess. She awakens at the same time that day is breaking. The Good Fairy appears and blesses the couple. Apotheosis
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) - Violin Concerto No. 3 (1880)
Camille Saint-Saëns wrote three violin concerti, along with five for piano and two for cello, while also being an astonishingly well-rounded polymath. From precocious early years he rose to become an archly-establishment figure, embracing art for the sake of art and rejecting the aggressive modernism of Wagner and Debussy. Berlioz famously dclared of the great Parisian that he “Knows everything but lacks inexperience.” The third violin concerto, by some margin the most popular, was written for the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Saraste in 1880. It features an abundance of melodies and considerable violinistic acrobatics for the soloist.
The first movement has its moments of drama, alternating with a more elegant second theme which George Bernard Shaw noted for its “poetic atmosphere and compelling melodiousness”. This elegiac element continues into the Andantino second movement, where a Venetian gondolier’s Barcarolle song is passed between soloist and woodwinds. The finale takes on a new direction, after an introductory recitative. The first theme is a brisk march with a hint of Spanish exoticism (a nod to Saraste?), before a second, more noble theme. The concerto culminates in a grand restating of the themes in the unmistakable romantic style which has appealed to audiences since the concerto’s first outing.
If he'd been making shell cases during the war it might have been better for music.
Camille Saint-Saens on Maurice Ravel
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Opus 60 (1806)
1 Adagio – Allegro vivace
2 Adagio
3 Allegro vivace – Trio: un poco meno allegro
4 Allegro ma non troppo
The old axiom of Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies vastly outranking the evens does a great disservice to the latter. While it can be accepted that the third, fifth, seventh and ninth symphonies perhaps make greater strides forward than the others, it is also difficult to find many works in the entire history of music which stand up to these ‘Monumental documents in the history of civilisation’, as philosopher Michael Tanner puts it. The evens still offer a huge amount of wit (in the finales of 4 and 8), drama (2, 4 and 6), and technical revolution (even for the humble timpani, in 4, 6 and 8).
The fourth symphony’s origins lie in a visit to the holiday retreat of the composer’s patron, Prince Pichnowsky, with whom he visited the nearby Count Oppersdorff. The Count paid Beethoven 500 Florins for the symphony, which was written in a short period of late summer 1806 while the Razumovsky quartets and sketches for the fifth and sixth symphonies were laid aside. The monumental Eroica symphony had been completed only the previous year, and it was only four years since the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, in which Beethoven resolves to live for the sake of his art in spite of his encroaching deafness.
On the same visit to Prince Lichnowsky’s estate, composer and patron fell out. Beethoven was furious at being presumptuously promised to the Prince’s dinner guests as the entertainment, and flew into a rage. The next day, his parting note to Lichnoswky observed “Prince, what you are, you are through chance and birth; what I am, I am through my own endeavours. There are, and will continue to be, thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven”.
The symphony opens with an uncomfortably mysterious introduction before the clouds part with characteristically Beethovenian drama to herald a sunny Allegro. Particularly striking are the novel transitions between sections of the first movement, with the timpani unusually leading the return from the remote B-major to the home key of B-flat major. The Adagio, in rondo form (ABACA), revolves around a repeated pair of spritely chords, with an overlying dreamily serene melody. Beethoven defies convention in the third movement by giving us a surprise second hearing of the trio section, interrupting the main dance-like theme which lies on the vigorously rustic side of a stately minuet. The boisterous energy is carried into the finale, a thrilling tour de force of woodwind virtuosity, leaving the dark clouds of the symphony’s introduction a distant memory.
© Rohan Shotton 2019. Programme notes may not be reproduced or edited without permission. Please contact me if you would like to use these notes.