The popular Overture and Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice opens a concert which takes us on a tour of music from three centuries by composers who were pioneers in their field. Gluck’s simplifying of opera focused on the storytelling, and we start with a short overture which sets up the drama which is to follow and then we hear the beautiful little ballet scene in which Euridice, in the Elysian paradise, is joined in dance by the Blessed Spirits. The charming flute melody of the dance is one of the best-known in the repertoire of the instrument.

Dance was at the heart of the work of the Italian/French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Initially noticed by Louis XIV an outstanding dancer, he quickly rose to the position of court-composer in 1653. His influence at court developed and he later collaborated with the playwright Molière; and together they pioneered the form Comèdie-Ballet, of which the entertaining satire Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670) is the best known.

For the Little Suite, Stephen Pratt has re-scored and (tastefully he says!) re-composed three excerpts of this work, with a fourth movement coming from Lully’s later opera Armide. Lully directed by beating time in front of the performers with a large stick - and this was to be his undoing when he hit his foot with it during a performance of his Te Deum, eventually contracting gangrene which caused his death in 1687. You’ll hear reference to the stick at the start of the Suite!  

Born in 1922, George Walker was the first African-American composer to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer prize for composition in 1996. Also a pianist, he was the first black instrumentalist to appear in a recital at the Town Hall in New York, and similarly when he was a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy two weeks later. Lyric has become one of his best-known works; it is an elegant and beautiful piece and is being played in tribute and to the memory to our much-loved former violinist, Mark Julius, who died in January 2024 at the age of 61. 

It almost goes without saying that Mozart was one of classical music’s greatest pioneers. Whilst much of his work during his later years focused particularly upon opera and concertos, in the summer of 1788 he wrote three remarkable symphonies within the space of eight weeks. Whether the symphonies were written for a specific concert, or whether Mozart ever heard them joins the list of mysteries from this period. 

The final work of this set, no.41 in C major adds another little mystery – why did he include a quotation from his comic aria Un bacio di mano (A kiss on the hand) in a first movement? This is one of several contrasting themes in the Symphony, which brings together stormy passages alongside the light-hearted, and the elegant. At just over half an hour long, this is Mozart’s longest symphony, yet it was completed just sixteen days after the G minor symphony (no.40).

The final movement introduces five themes, of which the first opens with a simple four-note figure which has musical roots as far back as plainchant. In the last phase of the symphony, Mozart brings back all five of these themes at once, heard simultaneously. Quite apart from the technical skill, this gives the symphony a glorious ending and leaves another unanswered question- if Mozart had not died three years later at just 35, where would he have taken this most significant musical form?

Stephen Pratt

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