Details
Bingham Parish Church
East Street
Bingham
Nottingham
Nottinghamshire
NG13 8DR
England
Programme
Igor Stravinsky – Danses Concertantes for Orchestra (1942)
Camille Saint-Saens – Suite, Op.49
George Enescu – Decet for Winds, Op.14
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Horn Concerto no.3 in E flat major, K.447
Performers
Jonathan Williams – French horn
Helix Ensemble
Programme Note
Stravinsky's Danses Concertantes for orchestra were composed in Los Angeles between 1940 and 1942, overtly as a 1941 commission from the Werner Janssen Symphony Orchestra. George Balanchine wanted Stravinsky to write a ballet for him and he always said the Danses were the result; his ballet was premièred in 1944. Stravinsky, however insisted it was a pure orchestral work in which four of the five movements have balletic names. Whatever the truth, the 20-minute work is a delight.
Jonathan Williams, our Musical Director is well known as a virtuoso of the French Horn and he is our soloist in the Horn Concerto No.2 in E flat, composed in 1783 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
George Enescu (1881-1955) the Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher composed his Decet in D for 10 Wind Instruments in 1906. He was a child prodigy who created his first musical composition at the age of five and enrolled in the Vienna Conservatoire aged seven! In 1895 he went to Paris to continue his studies on the violin and also composition. His own violin pupils included Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Grumiaux, and Ida Haendel. The Dectet (oboe and cor Anglais, and pairs of flutes, clarinets, bassoons and horns) combines elements of Romanian folk styles with a more cosmopolitan, European style of composition.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) is represented by his Suite for Small Orchestra, op.49, a 20-minute work in five movements that take their titles from Baroque dances. An extraordinary child prodigy, Saint-Saëns was quickly acclaimed as an outstanding pianist and a gifted and prolific composer whose works are characterized by their elegance, clarity, formal structure and straightforward beauty, the Suite being no exception.