New Millennium Strings

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Shéhérazade for Soprano and Orchestra

Ravel composed Shéhérazade, a three movement work for solo soprano and orchestra, choosing three poems written by Tristan Klingsor to provide the text for the singer. The music provides a backdrop for the descriptive ideas portrayed in the text. In the opening of the first movement, the atmosphere is first created in the strings with a pizzicato and a soft left hand string tremolo; this causes a tonal blur. Next the oboe plays an exotic modal theme that provides the backdrop of being in Asia. The unusual tonal color is also created by the instrumentation that Ravel requires: piccolo, English horn, harp, eight percussion instruments, and muted strings.

Movement two begins and concludes with a florid flute solo, punctuated by the English horn, clarinet, and bassoon.

Three Poems by Tristan Klingsor

ASIA

Asia, Asia, Asia:
Ancient and marvelous land of nursery tales
Where imagination
Sleeps like an empress
In her forest filled with mystery

Asia,
I would like to leave with the schooner
Rocking tonight in the harbor
Mysterious and solitary,
Spreading its purple sails at last
Like a huge night-bird in the golden sky.

I would like to leave for the islands of flowers
Listening to the song of the wayward sea
To an ancient, bewitching rhythm.

I would like to see Damascus and the towns of Persia
With light minarets in the air;

I would like to see beautiful silk turbans
Above dark faces with white teeth;
I would like to see eyes dark with love

And pupils shining with joy
Against skins golden like oranges;
I would like to see velvet clothes
And robes with long fringes.

I would like to see pipes in mouths
Surrounded by white beards;
I would like to see grasping merchants with shady looks,
And cadis and viziers
Who with a mere crook of their finger

Dispense all life or death at will.

I would like to see Persia and India and then China;
Pot-bellied mandarins under parasols,

Princesses with slender hands,
And scholars arguing
Over poetry and beauty;

I would like to linger in the enchanted palace
And, like a foreign traveler,
Contemplate at leisure landscapes painted
On fabrics in frames of pine
With a figure in the middle of an orchard;

I would like to see murderers smile

As the executioner cuts off an innocent head
With his great curved oriental sword.

I would like to see paupers and queens;
I would like to see roses and blood;
I would like to see deaths from love or else hate.

And then to return later
To recount my adventures to those who would know of dreams,
Raising, like Sinbad,
My old Arab cup
To my lips from time to time
To interrupt the tale artfully ...

THE ENCHANTED FLUTE

The shadows are gentle and my master is asleep
Under his conical silk cap,
His long yellow nose in his white beard.

But I am still awake
and I am listening
To a flute playing its song outside
Pouring out sadness and joy in turn,
A tune by turn languorous or skittish,
Played by my dear love,
And when I go to the window
It seems to me that each note flies
From the flute to my cheek
Like a mysterious kiss.

THE INDIFFERENT ONE

Your eyes are gentle as a girl's

young stranger,
And the delicate curve
Of your beautiful face, shaded with down,
Is even more seductive in its contours.
On my doorstep your lips sing
An unknown and charming language
Like music out of tune ...

Come in! And let my wine refresh you ...

But no, you go past,
And from my doorstep I can see you moving away,
Making me a last graceful gesture,
Your hips lightly swaying
In your languid, feminine gait ...

-- program notes by Laurien Jones

March 5, 2005