PROGRAMME

CLAUDE DEBUSSY arr. MICHAEL ALLEN
Suite bergamasque, L. 75
I. Prelude 

Girl with the flaxen hair (Prelude 8, book 1)

Footprints in the snow (Prelude 6, book 1)

FRANCIS POULENC
Airs chantés, FP46
1. Air romantique
2. Air champêtre
3. Air grave 
4. Air vif

TAN SEE HUEY (B.Mus3), soprano
BEATRICE LIN, piano

Translations for Airs chantés

MAURICE RAVEL
Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose): 5 pièces enfantines (Suite) <1908–1910>, with collaboratively composed introduction & interludes by students of the YSTOI

Introduction
1. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant: Lent (Pavane of Sleeping Beauty)
Interlude
2. Petit Poucet: Très modéré (Little Tom Thumb/ Hop-o’-My-Thumb)
3. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes: Mouvt de marche (Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas)
Interlude
4. Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête: Mouvt de valse très modéré (Conversation of Beauty and the Beast)
Interlude
5. Le jardin féerique: Lent et grave (The Fairy Garden)

CLAUDE DEBUSSY arr. André Caplet
Suite bergamasque, L. 75
III. Claire de lune (Moonlight)

Production Credits – Landscapes of Souls

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

 – From “Moonlight” by Paul Verlaine

The YST Orchestral Institute in collaboration with YST Artist Fellows Churen Li, David Loke Kai-Yuan and Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin, Visiting Professor Karst de Jong, and featuring soprano Tan See Huey (B.Mus3, Voice), present a live concert-stream-experience of orchestral arrangements from Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and a song-cycle from Francis Poulenc; music all steeped in the evocative symbolist art movement central to the wellspring of performative arts in early twentieth-century Paris.

Against a backdrop of historical disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and psychosocial gravity inherent to the global ennui we currently find ourselves, we present selected orchestral arrangements of some of Debussy’s most iconic piano pieces (Suite bergamasque (1905), Préludes, Book 1 (1910); a comically satirical reaction to symbolist impressionism (Poulenc’s Airs chantés (1927)); and an especially distinctive take on Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (1911) featuring premieres of collaboratively-composed interludes by YST Orchestral Institute students (2021). Together, the programme offers archetypal refractions—illuminated with a guided program featuring visual realizations from Stephanie Tan Hui Min (B.Mus4, Clarinet)—that seem to echo our current sociocultural tidal shifts, ones not dissimilar to those experienced in the turn of twentieth-century France.

We hope that this powerful music, with its emotional impressions that range from hopeful longing, to isolation, to humour, to grieving solace, but ultimately to transcendent springtime renewal, offers a soulful sojourn through life’s landscapes of passions and purposes.

This event will be livestreamed on the Conservatory’s YouTube channel. Follow and subscribe to be notified of upcoming streams.

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TICKETING INFORMATION

• Due to COVID-19 related guidelines, this performance will only be offered virtually.
• All event information is correct at time of print.

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