Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé

June 17, 2011, 7:30 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé

2010-11 Friday Masters

  • William Eddins, conductor & piano
    Lucas Waldin, conductor
Bookmark and Share

Details

The Masters series closes with Maurice Ravel’s vivacious Rapsodie espagnole and his rapturous ballet Daphnis et Chloé, music that is unparalleled in orchestral wizardry and brilliance. Falla’s fragrant and sensuous work for piano and orchestra is highlighted by Bill Eddins performing as piano soloist.

Stay after the concert for Afterthoughts, our popular and casual post-concert reception where you can meet the conductors and soloists and gain insight into the performance.

de Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé

click for detailed seating mapTicket Information

$71 Dress Circle (A)
$61 Terrace (B)
$52 Orchestra (C)
$38 Upper Circle (D)
$28 Gallery (E)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.

This program will also be performed on Saturday, June 18, 2011.

Thank you to our series sponsor: lexus of edmonton

Thank you to our series media sponsor: ckua

enbridgeOur Resident Conductor Lucas Waldin appears in part thanks to the support of Enbridge.
 

Program Info

Program

de Falla: Noches en los Jardines de España / Nights in the Gardens of Spain (24')
Lucas Waldin, conductor
William Eddins, piano

Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole (16')*

Intermission

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (50')*

*Indicates approximate performance duration
Program subject to change.

Program Notes

Noches en los Jardines de España (“Nights in the Gardens of Spain”)
Manuel de Falla (Cádiz, 1876 / d. Alta Gracia, Argentina, 1946)
 
First performed: April 9, 1916 in Madrid
Last ESO performance: January 2002
 
Highly influenced by the Andalusian melodies and flamenco rhythms of his homeland, Manuel de Falla also benefited from seven years of musical study in Paris, which gave his music a unique craftsmanship. Composed in 1916, Noches en los Jardines de España, for all that it has a descriptive title (as do each of its three movements), contains no detailed program, according to Falla. “The mere enumeration of their titles should be a sufficient guide to the hearer,” he wrote. “The composer has followed a definite format, regarding tonal, rhythmic, and thematic material…It was written to evoke places, sensations, and feeling. The themes employed are based on the rhythms, modes, cadences, and ornamental figures distinctive of the popular music of Andalusia, though they are rarely heard in their original guise.”
 
The piano’s role in the work is not that of a virtuoso piano concerto. Though demanding, complex, and exceedingly detailed, the piano’s part is evocative and even sensual, an integral part of the changing, delicate colours of this “painting in sound.” It was originally sketched out as a four movement work; one movement was eventually removed, though its music would become part of Falla’s ballet El amor brjuo (“Love, the Magician”).
 
The work’s opening movement evokes the gardens of the Generalife, the 14th century palace above the Alhambra, in Granada. The second movement, Danza lejana (“Dance heard in the distance”) begins in an air of mystery, over which a dance begins. The piano bridges to the finale, in which the soloist takes the role of a canto jondo (“deep song”) singer – a Flamenco style in which a lavish melody is set to a pulsing accompaniment. The rhythmic third movement, En los jardinos de la Sierra de Cordoba (“In the gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba”) builds to a highly-charged climax, but the work concludes in an atmosphere of wistfulness.
 
 
Rapsodie espagnole
Maurice Ravel (b. Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, 1875 / d. Paris, 1937)
 
First performed: March 15, 1908 in Paris
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
 
Many French composers were inspired by the music and the flavour of Spain. Unlike most, Maurice Ravel’s passion was inspired more directly, as he was born in the Basque region between France and Spain. True, he moved to Paris at only four months old and stayed there, but he returned to the place of his birth often, and referred to himself as a Basque. The roots of his Rapsodie espagnole lie in a number of other works with Spanish origins. Ravel adapted a two-piano Habañera he had composed in 1895 into a song without words or, in his phrasing, a Vocalise-Étude. But while he was writing it, he conceived of the idea of the Rapsodie, sketching it out originally for two pianos, but with the idea already in mind that he would orchestrate it.
 
The end result is a work in four distinct sections, beginning with Prélude à la nuit, which introduces a descending four-note motif first heard in the strings at the start, which serves as a unifying element through the work. The rest of the opening has a sense of mystery and expectation, leading to the second section, a Malagueña which lumbers in on lower instruments before the irresistible rhythms swirl in. But the excitement of this brief section is reined in – Ravel holds back the unbridled Spanish passion – for now. A plaintive English horn begins the transition to the Habañera, a condensed version of the original piano work. Again, there is a sense of restraint here, though there is also a fascinating range of orchestral colours as well. Gradually, the music’s intensity begins to rise, leading to the final section, a Feria, in which a flute beckons us at last to the lively, unrestrained gaiety with which we associate the dance rhythms of Spain. Ravel offers contrasts here, the music slows and the four-note motif from the opening makes its presence felt – but the pull of the dance wins the day, and the work – now considered to be Ravel’s first orchestral masterpiece – ends resplendent in both colour and life.
 
 
Daphnis et Chloé
Ravel
 
Ballet first performed: June 8, 1912 in Paris
Last ESO performance of the complete score: March 2000
 
After its first season in Paris, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets russes gained a lot of attention. And despite losing a lot of money, the Russian impresario decided that, with his next season, he would take an even more ambitious step by commissioning many new pieces – and use some of Paris’ best composers to write the scores. Maurice Ravel was flattered and honoured that he was asked to help create a new work. What he was not, however, was comfortable.
 
For one thing, this was the first time Ravel had written something to a setting not of his choosing. For another, the choreographer of the ballet, Mikhail Fokin had creative differences with Ravel – starting with the story chosen: the second-century Greek pastoral by Longus, Daphnis and Chloé. Yet another difficulty was the language barrier. “Things are even more complicated because Fokin doesn’t know a word of French and all I know of Russian is how to swear in it…You can imagine the atmosphere of these meetings,” Ravel wrote.
 
Fokin based his original concept around the vases and friezes of classical Greek art; an altogether more erotic rendering than Ravel was comfortable with. His notion was the more chaste representations of French art of the day. All of these trials made Ravel procrastinate. It became clear that he would not have the ballet ready for that next concert season, and when Stravinsky’s Firebird proved such a resounding success that year, Ravel felt even more pressure. It was finally ready for the end of the 1911/12 season.
 
Fokin was later to say he regretted some of the toning-down of his ideas in Ravel’s score. Diaghilev felt Ravel had composed more of an orchestral work than a ballet, and Fokin felt Diaghilev lavished more attention on Nijinksy’s setting of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. All in all, not a promising scenario for the premiere of Daphnis et Chloé – which was given only two performances after all the hand-wringing. And while anyone familiar with the Longus pastoral would be dismayed by the tame glossings-over of the ballet, Ravel’s score is now regarded as a masterpiece. It is also Ravel’s longest orchestral work.
 
Despite its length, however, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé achieves a remarkable cohesiveness through the constantly varied use of a few key melodic ideas. As the ballet opens, the curtain rises on stone figures of the god Pan and three nymphs. Three horns play a motif, over which a flute plays in imitation of a reed pipe. Both of these musical ideas will feature prominently as the ballet unfolds. The other key melody of the work is heard soon after this – a matched set of two short, but indescribably voluptuous phrases. “In its tender curve downwards and its yearning upward intervals it is one of Ravel’s greatest melodic inspirations,” writes Gerald Larner in his biography of Ravel. Listen for it shortly after the opening moment, heard first on a solo horn; it reappears time and again in different guises. Perhaps none is more famous than the flute solo version, which accompanies Lyceion’s attempt to seduce Daphnis. But it also works its way into the three times (only!) in the ballet in which Daphnis and Chloé actually dance together. Ravel’s score may not be the erotically-charged work Fokin might have wished for, but it is as gorgeous and sensuous a work as Ravel ever wrote, and a masterpiece of orchestral colour and variety.
 
Program Notes © 2011 by D.T. Baker

Artist Bios

William Eddins, conductor & piano

william eddins

William Eddins is in his sixth season as Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure, he has made it a priority that he conduct performances in nearly every subscription series the orchestra has presented, as well as a wide variety of special concerts and galas.

Bill Eddins began playing the piano at age five, but was bitten by the conducting bug while in his sophomore year at the Eastman School of Music. In 1989, he decided to begin conducting studies with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California. Assistant Conductorships with both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony (the latter under the leadership of Daniel Barenboim) honed his skills even further.

Mr. Eddins has many interests outside music. He is fond of biking, tennis, reading, pinball, and cooking. He recently completed building his own recording studio at his home in Minneapolis, where he lives with his wife Jen (a clarinetist), and their sons Raef and Riley. While conducting has been his principal pursuit, he continues to perform on piano in Edmonton and elsewhere. He accepts a limited number of guest appearances each year. In 2008, he conducted a rare full staging of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for Opéra de Lyon, which won him great acclaim, leading to a repeat engagement in Lyon in July and September 2010, as well as Edinburgh in August 2010, and in London in September 2010. During August 2009, Bill toured South Africa, conducting three gala concerts with soprano Renée Fleming and the kwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lucas Waldin, conductor

Lucas Waldin

The 2010/11 season marks the second for Lucas Waldin as Resident Conductor for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. This mentorship position is made possible through the Canada Council for the Arts and Enbridge. Mr. Waldin graduated in 2006 from the Cleveland Institute of Music with a Masters in Conducting. He has performed with L'Orchestre du Festival Beaulieu-Sur-Mer (Monaco), Staatstheater Cottbus (Brandenburg), and Bachakademie Stuttgart. Lucas was assistant conductor of the contemporary orchestra RED (Cleveland), director of the Cleveland Bach Consort, and a Discovery Series Conductor at the Oregon Bach Festival. In 2007, he was invited to conduct the Miami-based New World Symphony Orchestra in masterclasses given by Michael Tilson Thomas. In Lucerne in 2009, he also participated in a masterclass led by Bernard Haitink, with the Lucerne Festival Strings.

A native of Toronto, Lucas Waldin has spent summers studying in Europe, including studies at the International Music Academy in Leipzig, the Bayreuth Youth Orchestra, and the Acanthes New Music Festival in France. On this continent, he has studied under the renowned Bach conductor Helmut Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival, and has attended conducting masterclasses with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Mr. Waldin received a Bachelor of Music degree in flute performance from the Cleveland Institute, studying with Joshua Smith.

The ESO would like to thank Enbridge Pipelines for their commitment to the arts and this program by matching the funding provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Add comment

Tell us what you think! Comments are pre-moderated and will be published once approved.

The ESO does not necessarily endorse the views of any commenter. By submitting comments, you acknowledge that the ESO has the right to reproduce and publicize those comments or any part thereof.