Echos of Ravel and Grieg

This Concert is sponsored by Ariel Premium Supply, Inc.

October 24
7:30 PM

Free Admission 

Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church
1919 S 7th St, St. Louis, MO 63104

Free street parking 
PROGRAM

​Maurice Ravel: Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet, and String Quartet​
Désiré-Émile Inghelbrech: Deux Esquisses Antiques
I. Scaphe
II. Dryades 
Andrea Stern: Mosaic for Flute and Harp
Edvard Grieg: String Quartet No.1 in g minor, Op. 27
FEATURED ARTISTS

Jennifer Gartley, Flute
Megan Stout, Harp
Robert Walker, Clarinet
XiaoXiao Qiang, Violin
Melody Lee, Violin
​Siyu Zhang, Violin
Xi Zhang, Viola
Nathan Hsu, Cello
Maurice Ravel: Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet, and String Quartet
Maurice Ravel, (b.1875 - d.1937) a French composer, is often associated with the period of Impressionism. He was born in a Basque town, Ciboure, near the Spanish border. His mother was Basque, although she grew up in Madrid. Ravel’s Spanish heritage was often an inspiration for his compositions. They contain many references to Spanish folk tunes and traditional
Spanish music.

During the early part of the 20th century, Ravel was thoroughly engaged in the cultural scene of Paris. He was a participant in a group of young artists, musicians, writers,and poets called Les Apaches (The Hooligans). The group was very supportive of Claude Debussy’s music, and Ravel was greatly influenced by the older composer. The two composers often met in the same artist circles in Paris, although it’s debatable how close their friendship actually was.

Inspired by Debussy’s string quartet from a decade before, Ravel wrote his own quartet in 1903. Two years later, Ravel was commissioned to compose Introduction and Allegro for Madison Erard, a publisher and inventor of the modern pedal harp. The work was finally published in 1906, and premiered a year later. It’s an incredibly virtuosic work for the harpist,
and the piece is often thought of as a mini harp concerto.

Désiré-Émile Inghelbrech: Deux Esquisses Antiques
Désiré-Émile Inghelbrech (b. 1880 - d. 1965) was a contemporary of Maurice Ravel and made a career in conducting and composing. Inghelbrech was also a member of Les Apaches and a champion of Claude Debussy’s music. He conducted the premiere of Debussy’s Le Martyre de saint Sébastien. Later in life, Inghelbrech was the music director of the Paris Opera
from 1945-1950. Inghelbrech composed about 60 works during his lifetime. His repertoire was quite varied and included musical comedies, ballets, orchestral works, chamber music, and choral works.

Deux Esquisses Antiques was composed in 1902, while Inghelbrech was in his early 20’s. In his late teens and 20’s Inghelbrech was a violinist in the Concerts de l'Opéra orchestra and also a substitute conductor for a group called Concerts Berlioz. The first movement of Deux Esquisses Antiques, Scaphe, refers to an Ancient Greek sundial in the shape of a bowl and the second movement, Dryades, is in reference to the tree nymphs of Greek mythology.

Andrea Stern: Mosaic for Flute and Harp
Andrea Stern is a living American composer, harpist, and educator. She’s currently on faculty at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul) and is a harp instructor at MacPhail Center for Music and Saint Paul Conservatory. Her piece Mosaic, published in 2017, can be found on her album also titled Mosaic. Read more about Andrea at andreastern.com


Edvard Grieg: String Quartet No.1 in g minor, Op. 27
Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway in 1843. His heritage links him to Scotland where his ancestors belonged to the Scottish clan, Clan Gregor. Grieg’s father was a merchant and government employee of Bergen and his mother was a piano teacher. Grieg took lessons with his mother until he was 15 at which point he started at the Leipzig Conservatory. Sadly, when he was about 17 years old he was sick with both pleurisy and tuberculosis. He would suffer from lung damage and a spinal deformity for the rest of his life. However, only a year after his illnesses he made his debut as a concert pianist in Sweden. A few years later in 1867, Grieg would marry his first cousin. They had one daughter together that died of meningitis about a
year after she was born.

During the next 40 years of his life Grieg had a successful career as both a pianist and a composer. He lived in Copenhagen for a time and traveled extensively throughout Europe for various composition premiers and piano performances. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Cambridge in 1894 and the University of Oxford in 1906. Grieg passed away in 1907 from heart failure after suffering from an extended period of illness. His funeral was held in Bergen and 30,000-40,000 people attended!

Composed in 1877-78, Grieg’s String Quartet No. 1 in G minor is titled No. 1 only because the first quartet he wrote was lost. He also composed a third quartet that remains incomplete. Apparently, when the quartet was ready for publishing, the publisher, C.F. Peters worried that the quartet would have to be re-written as a piano quartet or quintet because of challenging double stops and chords Grieg included throughout the piece. Peters chose not to publish the piece because of this, so Grieg had to use a less preferred publisher to initially publish his quartet. In 1948, the musicologist, Gerald Abraham, theorized that Grieg’s quartet may have influenced Claude Debussy when he was composing his own quartet. However, Debussy was not outwardly a fan of Grieg, so it's possible that although the two quartets could be compared and similarities found, Debussy had no actual intentions of this occurring.