Word: alborada
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...evening’s plucky all-Ravel program featured four works by the 20th-century French composer. It got off to an energetic start with “Alborada del gracioso,” a brief selection whose title suggests the early morning serenade of a jester. The performance took full advantage of Ravel’s Impressionistic score, leaping into noisy climaxes and slipping suddenly into murky, bass-dominated string arrangements. Spirited castanets set off the piece’s Iberian influences, and a patient bassoon solo broke through the enthusiastic cacophony of metrical shifts and rhythmic switches...
...begin a concert that was most remarkable for its many fine solos, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra performed Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol," a piece that shows off every instrument in the ensemble. It is a virtuosic exploration of the possibilities inherent in its alborada theme, and not nearly as haphazardly composed as its title suggests. The Orchestra has never sounded better...
...total effect commanded attention as well. Under assistant conductor Channing Yu '93, the piece in its lusher moments evoked the fine string writing of Vaughan Williams. Yu has a knack for the Spanish dance idiom--one hopes that he will conduct Ravel's "Alborada del Gracioso" in the near future. The members of the orchestra were more than up to the task of the furious coda, never letting its fast tempo mar their phrasing...
...concocter of that booming bit of cafe music that Ravel drew this world-wide homage, but as the composer of two operas, numerous songs and chamber music works, and of a half-dozen suites and tone poems (Daphnis et Chloe, La Valse, Rhapsodic Espagnole, Alborada del Gracioso, Ma Mere I 'Oye, Le Tombeau de Couperin, et al.) which have long ornamented the symphonic programs of three continents. A miraculous orchestrator and an adept at poetic description in sound, fastidious, precise-minded Ravel had, following the death of Claude Debussy, succeeded to the place of No. 1 Impressionist composer. Born...
...with blurred combinations of color, got nebulous and exotic effects from his orchestra. He was an eclectic, often deliberately imitated the idioms of exotic or historic peoples, dishing them up in his own particular French sauce. Thus his opera L'Heure Espagnole and his descriptive orchestral works Bolero, Alborada del Gracioso and Rhapsodic Espagnole are built up of Spanish idioms; his La Valse has a Viennese, his Le Tombeau de Couperin an early 18th-Century flavor. A movement in Ma Mere I'Oye reflects Oriental idioms; a violin sonata is based on American "blues." Though a brilliant orchestrator...