Concertgebouw Orchestra plays Ravel and music by Dutch composers
Amsterdam, jazz, fairy-tales and the call of the East
Echoes of Ravel’s colourful musical fairy tales ring through the work of Amsterdam composers Leo Smit and Theo Loevendie.
This concert, filled with colour and rhythm, links Ravel with two eminent Dutch composers
Concert programme
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Leo Smit
Silhouetten
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Maurice Ravel
Shéhérazade
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-- interval --
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Theo Loevendie
Six Turkish Folk Poems (world premiere new orchestration)
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Maurice Ravel
Mother Goose
Performers
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Bas Wiegers
conductor
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Polly Leech
mezzo-soprano
About this concert
Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, based on stories from the One Thousand and One Nights, is filled with the flavours of the Middle East, which, in the early twentieth century, exerted a strong influence on West Europeans. One hundred years ago this month, Ravel conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in his Ma mère Oye, based on another collection, The Tales of Mother Goose.
This concert, filled with colour and rhythm, links Ravel with two eminent Dutch composers who studied in Amsterdam: Leo Smit (1900-1944) and Theo Loevendie (1930).
Loevendie is a jazz musician who, since the 1960s, has grown to become one of the Netherlands’ most esteemed composers. His fascination with Turkish culture reverberates through his Six Turkish Folk Poems. It will be played in a new orchestration, commissioned by the orchestra, for which Loevendie was assisted by his former student, Wilbert Bulsink. Leo Smit, like Loevendie, also relied heavily on Ravel and jazz, as can be heard in his Silhouettes. The piece, written while Smit was still a composition student in Amsterdam, was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1925.
Dates and tickets
About this concert
Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, based on stories from the One Thousand and One Nights, is filled with the flavours of the Middle East, which, in the early twentieth century, exerted a strong influence on West Europeans. One hundred years ago this month, Ravel conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in his Ma mère Oye, based on another collection, The Tales of Mother Goose.
This concert, filled with colour and rhythm, links Ravel with two eminent Dutch composers who studied in Amsterdam: Leo Smit (1900-1944) and Theo Loevendie (1930).
Loevendie is a jazz musician who, since the 1960s, has grown to become one of the Netherlands’ most esteemed composers. His fascination with Turkish culture reverberates through his Six Turkish Folk Poems. It will be played in a new orchestration, commissioned by the orchestra, for which Loevendie was assisted by his former student, Wilbert Bulsink. Leo Smit, like Loevendie, also relied heavily on Ravel and jazz, as can be heard in his Silhouettes. The piece, written while Smit was still a composition student in Amsterdam, was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1925.