Happy New Year to all! Sinan and I are looking forward to seeing you when
Strings Together starts again on January 12th . We really hope that you are
keeping well.
When choosing music for this term, thoughts of us all coping with the
restrictions in our lives caused by the current situation were not far from our
minds. We wanted to select music which helped to lift the spirits, to keep our
fingers and bows moving, and to literally help us to “play” our way through this
pandemic.
Enter Bizet’s “Carmen”, an opera described by the composer himself as “a
work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody”. It’s certainly true
that Bizet knew how to write a good melody - not just one, but a whole string
of absolute showstoppers!
It’s a story of passion and intrigue, considered shocking at the time of its Paris
premiere of 1875. Until then opera had portrayed uncontroversial, purely
romantic stories, but the libretto for Carmen, with its more challenging subject
matter, helped to move opera on to a post-Romantic era, with stories based
more on the realism of what was happening in people’s lives.
Some years later, two orchestral suites were put together, highlighting some of
the most well-loved melodies from the opera. The pieces which we’ll be
playing this term are taken from these suites. From Suite 1 we’ll be playing
“Les Dragons d’Alcala”, an instrumental interlude originally placed between
Acts 1 and 2 of the opera, and “Les Toreadors”, a passionate, exciting piece of
music which describes the dramatic arrival of the bullfighters. From Suite 2
comes the famous “Habanera”, sung in the opera by Carmen when she first
enters. It’s a provocative song on the untameable nature of love.
As for the other piece we’ll be playing this term, it’s a complete contrast in
style and period. It also happens to be very relevant for the January- March
time of year. You may like to take a guess, but I think that further details of
that can be kept as a surprise!