Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, based on stories from the One Thousand and One Nights, is filled with the flavours of the Middle East, which, in the early twentieth century, exerted a strong influence on West Europeans. One hundred years ago this month, Ravel conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in his Ma mère Oye, based on another collection, The Tales of Mother Goose.

This concert, filled with colour and rhythm, links Ravel with two eminent Dutch composers who studied in Amsterdam: Leo Smit (1900-1944) and Theo Loevendie (1930).

Loevendie is a jazz musician who, since the 1960s, has grown to become one of the Netherlands’ most esteemed composers. His fascination with Turkish culture reverberates through his Six Turkish Folk Poems. It will be played in an orchestration made by his former student, Wilbert Bulsink, who was also commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra to compose a prelude for the work. Leo Smit, like Loevendie, also relied heavily on Ravel and jazz, as can be heard in his Silhouettes. The piece, written while Smit was still a composition student in Amsterdam, was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1925.

Program:

Leo Smit – Silhouetten
Maurice Ravel – Shéhérazade
— interval —
Theo Loevendie – Six Turkish Folk Poems
Maurice Ravel – Ma mère l’Oye: Suite