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One instrument crops up with striking frequency in French music: the harp. Magdalena Hoffmann, in Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane, invokes this special Debussyan inflection on her instrument, joined by a string quartet. She also creates a close but delicate exchange with the violin in Camille Saint-Saëns’s Fantaisie. But no less essential to the special French sound is the flute: when it enters an intimate dialogue with the viola in Ibert’s Interludes, the conversation takes place against the undulating ground of a harp. Wave-like arpeggios for the harp are also heard in Quintet for Harp, Flute, Violin, Viola and Cello by the composer and admiral Jean Cras, a work perhaps inspired by his long journeys at sea. The 20th-century music of Cras, Debussy and Ibert receives an exciting contemporary counterpart in Guillaume Connesson’s String Quartet, composed in 2008.
One instrument crops up with striking frequency in French music: the harp. Magdalena Hoffmann, in Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane, invokes this special Debussyan inflection on her instrument, joined by a string quartet. She also creates a close but delicate exchange with the violin in Camille Saint-Saëns’s Fantaisie. But no less essential to the special French sound is the flute: when it enters an intimate dialogue with the viola in Ibert’s Interludes, the conversation takes place against the undulating ground of a harp. Wave-like arpeggios for the harp are also heard in Quintet for Harp, Flute, Violin, Viola and Cello by the composer and admiral Jean Cras, a work perhaps inspired by his long journeys at sea. The 20th-century music of Cras, Debussy and Ibert receives an exciting contemporary counterpart in Guillaume Connesson’s String Quartet, composed in 2008.
Ten winners of the Bavarian Young Composers’ Competition, in interaction with the BRSO, have developed miniature solo pieces, each for a single instrument. Together with the orchestra members, the young composers explore the rich technical and timbral possibilities of their respective instrument. The miniatures will be played by members of the BRSO in the orchestra’s colourful concert format “Watch This Space”.
