Grand Teton Music Festival: Pardon our French

By -
  • Paul Dukas, Fanfare pour La Peri
  • Francis Poulenc, Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone
  • Claude Debussy, Prelude No. 8, La fille aux cheveux lin
  • Maurice Ravel, Selections from, Ma mère l'oye
  • Darius Milhaud, La crèation du monde, Op. 81

This was the first of GTMF's free "Inside the Music" Tuesday concerts this summer. It was fabulous, of course. These events are hosted by the very funny Roger Oyster, principal trombonist of the Kansas City Symphony, who usually tells a little something about the composer and/or the piece. The concerts are about 75 minutes long and the music is generally varied and accessible.

I was especially eager to hear "La fille aux cheveux lin" ("The girl with the flaxen hair") because I've played it on the piano. I thought maybe they'd be playing an arrangement for a small group, but it was the original piano piece, and it was played beautifully by Deborah Moriarty. She was doing amazing stuff with the pedal that I've never even tried to do. I loved it.

My other favorite piece was Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose). This was originally written as a piano duet and Ravel later orchestrated it. But this performance was an arrangement for string quartet and piano, and it was stunning. I'd like to find a recording somewhere, but I'm not sure where I'd find it. Might be worth learning the piano duet with my son, though it sounds hard.

Comments

  1. momSunday, August 01, 2010 3:11:00 PM

    What a memory, Erin. "The girl with the flaxen hair" played by the girl with the flaxen hair.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cicely, Alaska (Roslyn, Washington)

By -
Image
We missed out on the TV series Northern Exposure when it first aired, but Erin got into reruns of it in the late 1990s, and we’ve watched most of it on DVD since. Phin has lately started watching it from the beginning too, during his rare allotted blocks of TV time. During our recent drive up to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada , we took the opportunity to make a little side trip to Roslyn, Washington, which was the actual location of the fictional Cicely, Alaska portrayed in Northern Exposure. It’s a very small town, and we were there late enough in the day that most businesses were closed, but it was fun to see it in person at last.
Read more

Brazilian Lounge

By -
Putumayo is a recording label that specializes in world music. All of their CDs guarantee "to make you feel good." So far I have found this to be true. A couple of weeks ago, while I was showing my mom and two of my sisters some of the cool shops in our area, I bought Putumayo's Brazilian Lounge . We like various kinds of electronic music (or techno or whatever; I am easily confused by labels), especially lounge stuff by groups like Thievery Corporation ), and I admit that I thought if I bought something Jon would like, he might not notice the money I was spending. (I also bought a floral mat made from recycled plastic, which I love very much and used as a sort of porch to our tent when we went camping recently.) Anyway, it was another successful music acquisition: groovy and mellow with cool Brazilian melodies and words. Shortly after I bought it, Jon said we needed to get more because he was in danger of making himself sick of it by listening to it too much. Now that
Read more

The Illusionist (2006)

By -
I'm not really crazy about the main actor, Norton,(he looks like a little weasel and he played a bad, weasel-like guy in "The Italian Job") but I did really like this movie. It was entertaining and had a fun plot. I sort of guessed a lot of the movie's plot twists, but not all so it was still surprising. Jessica Biel is so beautiful in this movie that I wasn't even sure it was her. I had to look it up on the internet to make sure it was the same girl that is on that show "7th Heaven" that I can't stand. It was! But I really liked her in this movie. Great ending (of course or I probably wouldn't have liked it). :)
Read more