Word: faune
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...next appeared in a very different work, Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, which has almost no steps at all. It is a brief, seductive work about two dancers practicing in front of a "mirror" (actually the proscenium) and gradually making enigmatic erotic contact with each other. Baryshnikov's first original Balanchine works are Stars and Stripes and Rubies, both of which happen to call for speed, wit and fiendish virtuosity...
...previous concerts, the HRC played with feeling, alternating between restraint and considerable power. Conductor James Yannatos brought out the talent in the HRO, combining the roles of the individual instruments with the orchestra as a whole. The dreamy forest of Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the lightness of Saint-Saens's Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Bohemian flavor of Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 in G were all pleasing to the ear and mind. The technical performance of the musicians--particularly Roy Kogan's solo in the Saint-Saens concerto--was also fine. The Dvorak...
Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun sets to music Mallarme's L'Apresmidi d'un Faune, a symbolist poem replete with a striking vagueness, fluidity and sense of reverie. A faun--half man, half goat--arises from his sleep near Mount Aetna in Italy and wanders through the woods. The whole image is one of dreamy light and dark, tentativeness and delicacy. The faun chases a group of nymphs up and down the mountain, but ultimately loses them as he once again yields to the soothing oppressiveness of sleep...
...PRELUDE SUGGESTS this same flowing, uncertain dreaminess. Throughout the work, the HRO almost perfectly conveyed this delicacy and subjective use of different sounds. The horns evoked impressions of the tremulous colors of the forest and the unmuted strings suggested the dance of the faun. Particularly impressive were the excitement and fullness which the whole orchestra achieved as it suggested the faun's anxious chase of the nymphs. The winds, brass and violins showed just the right amount of restraint that Mallarme imparts to the faun in the poem...
...horny faun who spends his afternoon chasing-and being rejected by-nubile nudes; a serpent whose proffered apple is spurned by Adam and Eve and who makes the mistake of swallowing it himself, only to be driven to despair by modern society; a spilled drop of Coke that becomes the primal seed for an army of fantastic monsters; a tidy bee whose neat little world is crushed by the love thrashings of a monstrous (to her eyes) human couple...