Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season November-December 2015 | Page 26

{ program notes
finale, “In the Gardens of the Sierra de
Córdoba.” But this lively music gradually
subsides into a darker reverie: a kind of
homesick nostalgia for Falla’s native Andalusia. In Falla’s words: “Something more
than the sound of festival and dance has
inspired these evocations in sound; melancholy and mystery also play their part.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes (third doubles
piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two
clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, harp, celesta and strings.

Images

Claude Debussy
Born in St. Germain-en-laye, France,
August 22, 1862; died in Paris,
March 25, 1918

Many of Claude Debussy’s closest friends
were visual artists rather than musicians,
and he possessed an ear for color that
rivaled their visual sensitivity. He easily
sensed correspondences between the two
art forms. When he began his orchestral
Images in 1906, he had already used this
title for two sets of piano pieces.
A slow and painstaking worker, Debussy had particular trouble with Images,
which took him from 1906 to 1912 to
complete. Its three constituent pieces were
written and premiered separately. Each
is an evocation of a different country:
“Gigues” of England, the longer threemovement “Ibéria” of Spain (often
performed on its own) and “Rondes de
printemps” of France. The most vivid of
these sound portraits, “Ibéria,” conjures
a country Debussy largely knew only at
second-hand; he had set foot in Spain on
just one occasion for a day visit to San
Sebastian to attend a bullfight.
Debussy, however, knew England quite
well. His “Gigues”— for the old English
dance the jig —uncannily blends a feeling of pastoral sadness with a cheeky,
upbeat urban mood. He had originally
wanted to call this music “Gigues tristes”
or “Sad Jigs,” a contradiction in terms
since the jig is traditionally a merry
dance. The melancholy tone of the oboe

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Ravel

“I’ve written only one
masterpiece — Boléro.
Unfortunately, there’s
no music in it.”
— Maurice Ravel
d’amore — an instrument with a range
between that of the oboe and the English
horn — is featured, singing a slow jig
tune that may have been derived from
an English folksong. It alternates with
a livelier, rather sassy tune in London
cockney spirit.
“Ibéria” is made up of three contrasting movements, the last two completely
interlocked. The first, “Par les rues et par
les chemins” (“By the roads and lanes”),
sets us instantly in the middle of an Andalusian village, its bustling dusty streets
checkered by hot sunshine and dark
shadows. Clarinets sing the sensuously
undulating main theme, while castenets
click out the dance rhythms. Debussy
draws on the orchestra’s brightest, spiciest
colors here.
In “Parfums de la nuit” (“The Perfumes of Night”), the hot Spanish sun
has set, and the composer summons the
orchestra’s softer, more muted colors to
evoke a nocturnal atmosphere. Languid
habañera rhythms propel this sensuous
music. In one of the composer’s most
magical moments, we hear the distant
sound of morning bells and a distant
parade of brass.

“Le matin d’un jour de fête” (“Morning
of a Festival Day”): The distant march
draws ever closer, and suddenly we are
back in blazing sunshine in the midst of
a Spanish festival. Strings are played like
guitars while tambourine and castanets
mark the beat. The instrumental colors
are again bright and brash. Fragments
of different melodies come in and out of
focus as Debussy’s musical camera pans
the crowd, showing one colorful vignette
after another.
Debussy’s French musical image,
“Rondes de Printemps” (“Spring
Rounds”) is the most delicate and subtle
of the three, its palette a wash of clear
pastel colors. Its rhythms are complex,
yet always supple and buoyant. The
musical fabric is woven from a French
nursery song “Nous n’irons plus au bois”
(“We won’t go to the woods anymore”)
that Debussy loved and had used in two
earlier pieces. We hear it first in the oboe,
but it is soon passed to flute and other
winds and in various guises continues
to be present throughout much of the
movement. It lends a naive joy to this very
sophisticated paean to spring.
Instrumentation: Four flutes (including two
piccolos), two obo