Chabrier - Holloway: Bourree Fantasque (1993) 7'
his own commencement of an orchestration completed for his centenary by Robin Holloway
Music Text
Orchestrated by Robin Holloway
Programme Note
Chabrier’s Bourrée Fantasque for solo piano (1891) is characteristically brilliant, ferocious, mordant little masterpiece. His speed-indication – "très animé et avec beaucoup d’entrain" ("very lively and with lots of oomph") – gives the mood, pungent with garlic, gutter and circus. Yet alongside the energy and sarcasm lie passages of gentle warmth that reveal the tenderness at the heart of this explosive composer, as well as displaying his besottedness with Wagner’s Tristan even in this burlesque context. Towards the end, a brief moment, when the main tune is given a sort of celestial halo, yokes the two aspects together. Then the closing stretch begins to take the bizarre secondary figure towards some strange new places - almost too late, for the main tune steals softly in, and within seconds has built up to a brusque, riotous conclusion.
The Bourrée Fantasque was orchestrated by Chanrier’s German champion, the conductor Felix Mottl, for large Wagner-plated forces that implode the piece’s tense, lithe lightness. Chabrier had begun his own version, for small almost salon-sized band, but it petered out quite near the start. Roger Nichols, the scholar of French music and fellow Chabrier-enthusiast, sent me a copy of this in the hope that it could be continued and completed for the centenary of the composer’s death in 1994. Which I did, observing spirit rather than letter, an act of love for and homage to a petit maître who has contributed so greatly to the gaiety of nations.
Robin Holloway
Reproduction Rights
This programme note can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with a credit to the composer
Scoring
2(II=picc).1.2.1-2.2.1.0-timp.perc(2):SD/tgl/tamb/BD/cyms/susp.cym- pft-strings
World Premiere
2/8/1994
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
English Northern Philharmonia / Paul Daniel CBE
his own commencement of an orchestration completed for his centenary by Robin Holloway
Music Text
Orchestrated by Robin Holloway
Programme Note
Chabrier’s Bourrée Fantasque for solo piano (1891) is characteristically brilliant, ferocious, mordant little masterpiece. His speed-indication – "très animé et avec beaucoup d’entrain" ("very lively and with lots of oomph") – gives the mood, pungent with garlic, gutter and circus. Yet alongside the energy and sarcasm lie passages of gentle warmth that reveal the tenderness at the heart of this explosive composer, as well as displaying his besottedness with Wagner’s Tristan even in this burlesque context. Towards the end, a brief moment, when the main tune is given a sort of celestial halo, yokes the two aspects together. Then the closing stretch begins to take the bizarre secondary figure towards some strange new places - almost too late, for the main tune steals softly in, and within seconds has built up to a brusque, riotous conclusion.
The Bourrée Fantasque was orchestrated by Chanrier’s German champion, the conductor Felix Mottl, for large Wagner-plated forces that implode the piece’s tense, lithe lightness. Chabrier had begun his own version, for small almost salon-sized band, but it petered out quite near the start. Roger Nichols, the scholar of French music and fellow Chabrier-enthusiast, sent me a copy of this in the hope that it could be continued and completed for the centenary of the composer’s death in 1994. Which I did, observing spirit rather than letter, an act of love for and homage to a petit maître who has contributed so greatly to the gaiety of nations.
Robin Holloway
Reproduction Rights
This programme note can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with a credit to the composer
Scoring
2(II=picc).1.2.1-2.2.1.0-timp.perc(2):SD/tgl/tamb/BD/cyms/susp.cym- pft-strings
World Premiere
2/8/1994
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
English Northern Philharmonia / Paul Daniel CBE
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