Bizet’s second Carmen Suite includes several well-known tunes from the eponymous opera, including the Habanera, with its characteristic snaking chromatic lines representing Carmen’s seductive wiles, and the rousing Toreador song. Valses Nobles et Sentimentales harkens back to Schubert, who published two sets of waltzes entitles “noble” and “sentimental.” Ravel combines both in his set of waltzes, though his modernist musical language, rife with dissonance and extra chord tones that create unique sound colours, could not be further from Schubert’s classical style. Pierre Boulez describes Debussy’s symphonic poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun as one of the earliest examples of musical modernism. Musical devices such as whole-tone (six-note) scales, pentatonic (five-note) scales, and abundant chromaticism create a dreamlike state typically associated with Debussy’s impressionism. Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo’s final orchestral composition, the Symphony in G minor is a typical romantic-era symphony, featuring an opening theme that recurs over the course of all four movements, creating a cyclical symphonic form on the largest scale.

Kristian Alexander | conductor