20th Century, Solo with Orchestra, Works
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was one of France’s most intriguing 20th-century composers. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire, he secured a position in 1917 as a cultural attaché at the French Embassy in Brazil, where he received much exposure to Brazilian music. Upon returning to Paris in 1919, he became associated with the circle of famous early 20th-Century French composers known as “Les Six.”
The author of numerous symphonic and chamber works, Milhaud originally composed the music for Scaramouche in 1937 as incidental music for saxophone to accompany a children’s play. He was then asked to transcribe the music for two pianos, which he did as a three-movement suite. The transcription proved so popular that he then re-orchestrated the suite for saxophone and orchestra in 1940, when it was premiered by the famous French saxophonist Marcel Mule.
The music is in three movements – Vif , Modéré, and Brazileira. The first movement is a witty dialogue between the solo saxophone and orchestra, with some motifs loosely based on an English folk song. The second movement is more reflective, with the soloist initially juxtaposed against a sonorous muted chorus of trumpets, trombones, bassoons and basses. The last movement, based on samba rhythms, is one of his most recognizable works and clearly shows the influence of his early Brazilian interlude.
Classical, Solo with Orchestra, Works
This is one of 6 famous concertini originally attributed to the Italian composer Pergolesi. These works were first published in Holland in 1740, but without mention of a composer. Recent scholarship has discovered that all of these works, far from being the work of an Italian, were actually composed by a Dutch nobleman, Unico Wilhelem Graf Van Wassenaer. He had permitted his court violinist, Carlo Ricciotti, to publish them, but only on condition that he (Van Wassenaer) was not associated with them. (Perhaps he did not wish his noble reputation to suffer by being so closely associated with the music profession.)
This concertino, like all of the others, is Italianate in style, with richly worked-out counterpoint and lush 7-part string writing (including 4 separate violin parts in Neapolitan style). The movements are alternately slow and fast, with a stately introduction, a fast alla breve second movement, followed by a slow third movement in “sicilienne” style.
Stravinsky adapted the last movement, in fast 6/8 time, as the basis for the “Tarantella” movement in his Pulcinella Suite.
20th Century, Solo with Orchestra, Works
Pastorale d’Eté (Summer Pastoral), written in 1920 during a vacation in the Swiss Alps and subtitled “Poème Symphonique,” was inspired by a quotation from Arthur Rimbaud: J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été (“I’ve embraced the dawn of the summer”).
Honegger expresses his impression of this summery idyll in Switzerland with pastoral and shepherd airs that often recall Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony”. The happiness is never disturbed. The three parts – calm, lively and gay, calm – merge into one another, the third combining and superimposing the musical elements of the first two.
