Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season November-December 2015 | Page 24

{ program notes

Lise de la Salle last performed with the
BSO in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20
in D minor, K. 466 in February 2012,
Jamess Gaffigan, conductor.

ABOUT THE CONCERT:
A LBOR ADA DEL GR ACIOSO

Maurice Ravel

Born in Ciboure, Basses Pyrénées,
France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris,
December 28, 1937

Before it received its dazzling orchestral garb, Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso
began life — as did many of this French
master’s orchestral works — as a piece
for piano, the fourth of his Miroirs
composed in 1905. And it is an extremely brilliant and demanding piano
piece, making such an impression at its
debut in January 1906 that the audience
immediately clamored for an encore.
Its delighted dedicatee, the critic M. D.
Calvocoressi, aptly described it as “a big,
independent scherzo in the manner of
Chopin and Balakirev,” and extolled its
“humor” and “frank, vivacious fantasy.”
Clearly, the work remained a favorite
of Ravel’s, too, for in 1918, during a
crea ]