An Evening of French Masterworks
Conductor: Oliver Till
Leader: Tina Bowles
withQueen's Park Singers
Programme:
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Boulanger - D'un Matin de Printemps
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Fauré - Cantique de Jean Racine
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Bizet - Carmen Suite No 1
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Delibes - Cortège de Bacchus (from Sylvia)
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Poulenc - Stabat Mater
Programme Notes
Lili Boulanger (1893 - 1918)
Lili Boulanger achieved recognition as a composer and musician at an early age, becoming the first woman to win the 'Prix de Rome' national French competition for composers (her father Ernest Boulanger also won the prize way back in 1835). Always in poor health, she died at the age of 24. Despite her early death she left behind a significant and original group of works. 'D'un Matin de Printemps' (Of a spring morning) is one of Boulanger's last compositions, originally a duet for violin and piano, but orchestrated by Boulanger just before she died. In it the orchestra brings us the sounds of a spring morning.
Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924)
Gabriel Fauré was a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, which he later directed. However, by inclination he was a church musician, composing religious music for choir and organ, of which perhaps the most famous is his 'Requiem'. The Cantique de Jean Racine, often performed with that requiem, was a very early work that he wrote as a nineteen-year-old to a French paraphrase by the playwright Jean-Baptiste Racine of a Latin hymn for the church service of matins. Fauré entered it in a composition competition at his music school, the École Niedermeyer, and won first prize in 1865. Originally for four vocal parts and piano and organ, he later added the strings and orchestrated it.
Georges Bizet (1838 - 1875)
Georges Bizet wrote his most popular opera 'Carmen' to a libretto by Prosper Mérimée. At its first performance in 1875 it was not well received, and a disappointed Bizet died three months after that performance. The opera shocked audiences with its portrayal of lower-class life. A comment in the London theatrical paper 'Figaro' in 1884 declared that 'Carmen is a fille de joie of the very worst type, passing from man to man without a particle of scruple'. But the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche took a different view. Nietzsche embraced the Mediterranean dreams conjured up by Bizet: 'With Carmen we take leave of the damp north, of all the mists of the Wagnerian ideal. This music possesses the limpid dry atmosphere of warmer climes.'
In the Suite, the Prelude to Act 1 is followed by the Prelude to Act IV, an Aragonaise. This is followed by an intermezzo that is the Prelude to Act III. Next comes the Seguidille from Act 1 and then Les Dragons (or foot-soldiers) d'Alcala. The Suite rounds off with perhaps the most famous pieces in the opera, the song of the Toréadors.
Léo Delibes (1836 - 1891)
Léo Delibes is probably best remembered as the composer of the opera 'Lakmé', whose 'flower song' was supposed to soothe anxious passengers as they board British Airways flights. He composed in a melodious and graceful style that attracted audiences to his ballets, of which the most successful was his comic ballet 'Coppélia'.
His more serious classical ballet 'Sylvia', premiered in 1876, did not initially attract audiences. It was not until Frederick Ashton revived the work in 1952 that it achieved popularity. The story tells of the love between the nymph Sylvia and a shepherd Aminta. The third act of the ballet opens with a Bacchanalia at which Aminta looks in vain for Sylvia. The music for this is the 'Cortège de Bacchus'.
François Poulenc (1899 - 1963)
François Poulenc was a composer of a later generation, and a member of the group of Erik Satie's followers, known as 'Les Six' (the others were Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Germaine Tailleferre). Like Satie, they preferred simplicity in melody and harmony and motoric rythms, initially in reaction to the impressionist wash of the music of Claude Debussy. Poulenc himself experienced a religious epiphany in 1936 at the shrine if the Black Virgin of Rocamadour, following the death of his friend and fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud. When another close friend, the painter and stage designer Christian Bérard died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1949, during a rehearsal at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris, Poulenc decided to compose in his memory a setting of the medieval devotional Latin hymn, the Stabat Mater.
The work goes through the sorrows of the Virgin Mary as she observes her son's crucifixion, describing her grief and the anguish of mother and son. Poulenc composed this in twelve short movements for soprano, chorus and orchestra. Poulenc's Stabat Mater recieved its premiere, to critical aclaim, at the Strasbourg Festibal in June 1951.
The Concert Charity
Pedal Power https://www.pedalpowercc.org
Pedal Power is fun, freedom and fitness.
Pedal Power is an award-winning project that has been running for 21 years. The team of qualified cycling instructors, together with the Management Committee and other volunteers who have lived experience of disability, provide welcoming inclusive cycling sessions, in safe off-road locations. Pedal Power sessions take place 'Rain or Shine', five times weekly from February to November. The club has a fleet of bicycles, tricycles, quad cycles, side by side tricycles (for riders and carers), and a Velo for people who use wheelchairs, at each of the three locations.
The club receives grants from local authorities and sporting bodies as well as crowd funding initiatives, but the club could not run without the volunteers who contribute enormous amounts of time and expertise.
The Concert Players
Conductor: Oliver Till
First Violins
- Tina Bowles (Leader)
- Rachel Barbanel
- Jocelyn Berndt
- Leila Boushehei
- Mary Dentschuk
- Steve Dobson
- Catherine Menon
- Stephen Nurse
- Steve Rowlinson
- Máire Sloman
- Bronwen Whitaker
- Lou Winship
- Nichola Blakey (Principal)
- Ursula Antolik
- Lucy Atherton
- Poppy Boyd-Taylor
- Mark Bullard
- Susan Grayeff
- Calum Henderson
- Anne Lea
- Lisa Lundequist
- Em McDonald
- Aytaç Mevlit
- Eve Naftalin
- Jak Poore
- Gerry Shortall
- Jan Toporowski
- Michiko Ward
- Geoffrey Irwin (Principal)
- Tom Boswell
- Nigel Franklin
- Winston Ho
- Alys Howells
- Jamie Masters
- Josephone Tsakok
- Josh Salter (Principal)
- Hilary Evans
- Libby Fogg
- Lisa Fordham
- Shirley Franklin
- Katherine Lowe
- Helen Mabelis
- Sara Rance
- Alastair Hume (Principal)
- Francois Moreau
- Jen Morgan
- Clara Wells
- Graeme Scott
- Anna Mikhailova
- Mit Lahiri
- Ming Li Kong
- Adrian Hall
- Lindsey Glen
- Ian Merryweather
- Ken Ruffel
- Rosalind Hedley-Miller
- Louise Johnston
- Lara Goodhand
- Simon Ashdown
- Tom Brett
- Susie Hubbard
- Julie Rooke
- Glyn Jones
- Martin Loveridge
- Peter Rolinson
- Charlotte Webb
- Chris Dicken
- William Barnes-McCallum
- Paul Weaving
- Dominic McGonigal
- Stuart Delve
- Sharon Moloney
- Jak Poore
- Tim Saxby
- Elliott Wilkes
- Aisha Palmer
- Daniel Chappell
