Wacky French Artistes
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
There’s an ox dancing a tango on the roof! Milhaud’s “Le boeuf sur le toit” gets a rousing performance from the London Symphony Orchestra, Antal Dorati conducting.
Milhaud named his entertaining “Le boeuf sur le toit” after the title of a Brazilian popular song he admired. Jean Cocteau used the music for a highly successful ballet of the same name. Soon after the ballet’s premiere, a bar favored by Cocteau and Les Six (a group of French renegade composers, including Milhaud) moved to larger premises, re-naming itself after this work. You can still go there and raise a glass to those wacky French artistes!
Nikolas Medtner’s op. posth. Piano Quintet in C receives an appropriately radiant performance by pianist Evgeni Svetlanov and the Borodin Quartet. According to the composer himself, this composition, begun in 1904 and completed only in 1949, sums up his life and his work: the programmatic aspects tell of a man who acquires wisdom through a long, complicated life full of struggle, suffering, loneliness, and joy.
Franz Schubert’s Fifth is the sunniest, most light hearted of all his symphonies, genial and bucolic. As Peter Branscombe’s notes to this recording by Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic state, “The finale is a happy Allegro vivace with reminiscences of Haydn, though the blend of wit, wistfulness, and high spirits could only be the work of Schubert.”
Milhaud named his entertaining “Le boeuf sur le toit” after the title of a Brazilian popular song he admired. Jean Cocteau used the music for a highly successful ballet of the same name. Soon after the ballet’s premiere, a bar favored by Cocteau and Les Six (a group of French renegade composers, including Milhaud) moved to larger premises, re-naming itself after this work. You can still go there and raise a glass to those wacky French artistes!
Nikolas Medtner’s op. posth. Piano Quintet in C receives an appropriately radiant performance by pianist Evgeni Svetlanov and the Borodin Quartet. According to the composer himself, this composition, begun in 1904 and completed only in 1949, sums up his life and his work: the programmatic aspects tell of a man who acquires wisdom through a long, complicated life full of struggle, suffering, loneliness, and joy.
Franz Schubert’s Fifth is the sunniest, most light hearted of all his symphonies, genial and bucolic. As Peter Branscombe’s notes to this recording by Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic state, “The finale is a happy Allegro vivace with reminiscences of Haydn, though the blend of wit, wistfulness, and high spirits could only be the work of Schubert.”
