Bayerisches Staatsorchester
britten, debussy & ravel
PROGRAMME
Benjamin Britten
Peter Grimes – Four Sea Interludes, op. 33a
Les illuminations, Op. 18
intermission
Claude Debussy
Pelléas et Mélisande Suite (arr. Erich Leinsdorf)
Maurice Ravel
La valse
about
In 1939, Benjamin Britten sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with his life partner Peter Pears, partly because his pacifism in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War was causing problems in his native Great Britain. He would not return to England until 1942. The Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by star conductor Vladimir Jurowski will be performing two works from Britten's 'American period'.
While still in Great Britain, Britten had been an enthusiastic admirer of the unfinished collection of poetry Illuminations by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Not even the most nationalistic French composers had turned to the work of a poet considered to be too complex and difficult to be set to music. Britten, however, was able to identify with Rimbaud's cynicism and nostalgia for an innocent childhood. The nine-part song cycle Les Illuminations was one of the first works he completed in the United States. Before the French soprano Sabine Devieilhe takes to the stage to perform this intense cycle, the Bavarian State Orchestra will first play Britten's Peter Grimes – Four Sea Interludes, op. 33a.
Major sources of inspiration for Benjamin Britten were the French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The Bavarian State Orchestra will be playing a number of fragments from Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande (in an arrangement by Marius Constant). Also on the programme is Ravel's well-known orchestral gem La Valse, a choreographical poem in which an idyllic ball – at the imperial court in around 1855 with waltzing couples and crystal chandeliers – ends in an outbreak of violence and chaos.
credits
coproduction
Klarafestival, Bozar
in the framework of
The European Galas
image
© Wilfried Hosl
