PROGRAMME NOTES

written by AURÉLIE WALSCHAERT

Paul Dukas L’Apprenti sorcier (1897)
Modest Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) (arr. Ravel) (1922)

27.10.2024 FLAGEY

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[read also: Grandy discusses Pictures at an Exhibition]
[discover also: Close Encounters]
[discover also: Houston Symphony Podcast]
[all programme notes]

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) composed only two ‘real’ orchestral works – the Schéhérazade Overture and Rapsodie Espagnole. His other compositions for orchestra are either arrangements of chamber music works or were written as ballets. His most spectacular composition for orchestra is his 1922 arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). The Russian composer had written the piano work in 1874 as a musical homage to the sudden death of the architect and artist Viktor Hartmann, who was a good friend of his. Ravel was not the only one to have orchestrated Mussorgsky’s work, but his version is by far the most popular. In 1922, the work conquered all of France, and from there, the world.

The French composer Paul Dukas (1865-1935) was also a master of the art of orchestration, down to the last detail. Because of his perfectionism, few of Dukas’ works survived, but fortunately, the symphonic poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice escaped the rubbish bin. Since the passage that was used in the Disney animated film Fantasia, this work has become even more popular and is a favourite among audiences young and old.

Paul Dukas composed L’apprenti sorcier’ (known in English as ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’), subtitled ‘Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe’, as a symphonic poem that appeals to the imagination. The work tells the story of a quirky apprentice sorcerer. As soon as his master went out the door, the youngster enchanted a broom to help him fill the bath with water from the river. But his plan soon got out of hand: the broom refused to stop, and filled the entire house with water. The apprentice could not remember how to stop the broom, and simply chopped it in half, but that just made the problem twice as bad. Just as he was about to be engulfed by a gush of water, the master returned home and broke the spell.

Dukas’ talent as an orchestrator reached its apex in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He used the orchestra’s rich palette of tonal colours to give each character its distinctive form. The opening theme, with its mysterious atmosphere, paves the way for the introduction of the disobedient broom, played by the bassoon. This is soon followed by an airy melody in the upper strings: magic makes its entrance. The as yet carefree sorcerer’s apprentice is also heard in the woodwinds and the glockenspiel. Walt Disney grasped the filmic qualities of the work and in 1940, some fifty years after its composition, perpetuated it in the animated film Fantasia.

In 1922, the composer Serge Koussevitzky asked Ravel to rework for symphony orchestra the hitherto unknown Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky. The Russian composer had written the piano cycle in 1874, shortly after the death of his friend, the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann. The two artists had been brought together by their shared quest for renewal within Russian nationalism. After visiting a retrospective exhibition of Hartmann’s work, Mussorgsky decided to give his walk along the many paintings musical expression: ‘Hartmann would not leave me alone. The sounds and ideas hung in the air. I am gulping them down and am so excited that I can hardly manage to put them down on paper. The interludes, which I have called ‘promenades’, are good. I want to work more quickly and steadily. So far, I think it’s well turned.’

In the piano suite, you can, so to speak, hear Mussorgsky walk past ten different works of art. From a malicious dwarf or children playing in the Tuileries gardens in Paris to the great city gate of Kyiv, all the pictures are translated into an imaginative musical language. The suite opens with a Promenade that depicts the visitor strolling through the museum. The theme returns in a slightly varied form between each musical depiction of a painting, as a leitmotif between the movements.

Ravel succeeded perfectly in capturing the different atmospheres in his orchestration for a modern orchestra, albeit not without marking it with his own distinctive stamp. Thus, in Il vecchio castello he adds an alto saxophone to the orchestra in order to create an otherworldly mood, and in Bydło evokes the entry of a lumbering Polish ox-cart with an elegy for tuba. In Catacombae, it is only the lower instruments of the orchestra that play, and a malevolent atmosphere also surrounds The Hut on Chicken’s Legs – a Russian fairy tale about a witch who lures children to her hut in order to eat them. Ravel masterfully brings the work to an end with majestic chords and the peal of bells.