Programme Notes

Summer Concert June 2026

L'Italiana in Algeri, one of Rossini's first great successes, was completed by the twenty-one year old composer in twenty seven days. ("I always wrote best", he mused in old age, "when the manager was tearing his hair out behind me. In my day half the theatre managers in Italy were bald by the time they were thirty"). The plot of the opera, a tangle of romance and farce, concerns the Bey of Algeria and his harem, a shipwreck, a pair of long-lost lovers and a considerable amount of trickery.
The overture, one of Rossini's most famous, is unusual in his output in that it was written specifically for its opera and was not afterwards recycled (The Barber of Seville overture had already done duty for two previous operas) It follows the usual Rossini pattern – an anticipatory slow introduction followed by a sparkling Allegro. The interplay of the woodwind instruments is, even by Rossini's standards, particularly felicitous.
The opera was first performed in Venice on 22 May 1813.
Programme notes provided by John Kane, Making Music

  This attractive single-movement concertante work in sonata form was written at the request of the leader of the Provisional Theatre Orchestra in Prague, and debuted in 1877. Dvořák based it on the Andante of his earlier String Quartet No. 5 of 1873, which had hitherto remained unperformed.
The work is built out of two linked ideas. The first is a song like melody, heard high on the violins at the outset, and then freely elaborated by the soloist who weaves intricate melodic patterns around the other orchestral players. The second idea is again a romantic melody, less elaborate than the first with the soloist soaring high above a running orchestral accompaniment. The middle section is much more dramatic with virtuoso figures played by the soloist punctuated by dramatic outbursts from the orchestra. It is only short lived and the mood of tranquillity is restored with the return of the first idea. The piece moves into the tonic major when the second idea returns and a brief coda draws it to a close.
The romance is a highly characteristic work of Dvořák, combining his deep understanding of classical form and romantic harmony with beautiful flowing Slavonic melody. The reworking of the piece from the string quartet movement into a romance was done at a time of great tragedy in his life. In 1877 he lost three of his children, one pre-natal, one through an accident and the third to smallpox. Perhaps these events contributed to the emotional intensity of the work, the rending harmonies and the lyrical beauty of the violin writing.

  Ravel belonged to the 'young blood' school of composition that pursued the search for a new voice in French music; its members included Fauré, whose composition class Ravel entered at the Paris Conservatoire in 1897, Chabrier, Satie and Debussy. A feature of the school was the attempt at reconciliation between modern and ancient music. Such a feature is a characteristic of the Pavane pour une Infante défunte, one of Ravel's early works, composed in 1899. In 1910 the composer transcribed the Pavane for small orchestra, and it has become one of his most popular works.
The pavane, or pavan, as it is commonly spelled in English, was a stately and grave dance measure very popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. In masquerades, pavans were played as processional music and were similarly used at weddings and religious ceremonies; they were sung as well as played. Both Italy and Spain claim its origins.
Ravel made it clear that the evocation of times past represented by this work was no funeral piece: his pavan was not in memory of any particular princess but was simply a dance that could have been executed by a princess from a bygone age. Like many of his works, this one originated as a piano piece and the composer often rebuked pianists for playing it too slowly: he insisted that it was the princess who was dead, not the pavan! Moreover he chose the title as much for its sonority as for its meaning. Lastly it was dedicated to a very much alive princess, the Princess de Polignac, a great patroness of the arts.
Ravel himself admitted that his pavan betrayed Chabrier's influence. It is mainly in quadruple time with occasional bars in duple time. There are several broadenings of tempo that would make it difficult to use as a dance. Formally, it is a rondo with three appearances of its sweet and sombre melody separated by two episodes. It established Ravel's lifelong interest in dance forms; later examples were La Valse, Boléro and Le Tombeau de Couperin.
Programme notes provided by Ben Brickman, Making Music

  Ravel started composing “The Tomb of Couperin” as a solo piano work in 1914, as a homage to Francois Couperin and the tradition of the French keyboard suite. His progress was interrupted by World War I during which he witnessed the horrors of conflict and was deeply affected by the loss of several acquaintances, and especially the death of his mother in early 1917, eventually completing the work later that year.
Each of the six dance movements is a tribute to the memory of one or more of his friends. The Rigaudon (a sprightly 17th century folk dance for couples in duple metre) was originally the fourth movement and is dedicated the two Gaudin brothers from Ravel’s home town both killed on the same day. Ravel introduces a contrasting lyrical middle section for solo winds accompanied by guitar-like strummed chords.
In 1919 Ravel orchestrated four of the movements, with the Rigaudon placed last.