Dramatically Playful Love Mancusi, Ravel, Stravinsky

Stravinsky started writing the ballet Pulcinella at the encouragement of Sergei Diaghilev, the founder and director of the Ballets Russes in Paris, who persuaded the composer to adapt Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's music into a ballet for the early 18th-century commedia dell'arte story. Since then, musicologists have determined that some of the original music was not in fact written by Pergolesi, but presumably by other, lesser-known Italian Baroque composers. The story of Pulcinella's love... affairs, set in Naples, is a true comedy, full of elements of the commedia dell'arte, the core characters of Italian improvised theatre. The movements of the work are alternately humorous, lyrical and mock-romantic, focusing on the various tricks played by the Neapolitan maidens attempting to entice the sly Pulcinella with their seductive dances.
Perhaps Ravel's longest and most passionate work, Daphnis et Chloé, was also commissioned by Diaghilev and was premièred in 1912. Its vast orchestral forces and sprawling harmonies help to illustrate the extreme emotions and the vividly imagined recounting of the ancient Greek love story. Out of this sumptuous impressionist symphonic work, Ravel also created two orchestral suites, which are often played on concert stages. Before the two ballet music pieces, we will also get to hear Klangfiguren für Orchester ("Sound Shapes for Orchestra”), a composition written by the conductor for the evening, Guido Mancusi. The title refers to the playfulness of the music, orchestration, and melodies, with the dance of the different harmonies leading the listener from one dance world to another.