Yesterday evening's performance by the Juilliard Orchestra, conducted by Emmanuel Villaume, was an opportunity for the students to show their mastery of the orchestral format, and they did this exceptionally well.
Ravel's well known Les Contes des Ma mère l'oye (the Mother Goose suite) is beautifully melodic, and it would take a much colder heart than mine to resist it. The Trumpet Concerto by Henri Tomasi that followed was not nearly so well known a composition; this was actually the first time I'd heard it. As I sat in the audience, what I found fascinating to watch was the almost continual switching among mutes that the piece required. The work was a showcase for the soloist, Kevin Quill, who made the listener wish the repertoire for the solo trumpet wasn't so limited.
The second half of the program was devoted to Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1919 version). The Firebird is today best known as the composer's first full collaboration with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Although it doesn't reach the levels of genius found in the later Le Sacre du Printemps and Petrushka, the music contains a number of elements whose modernism is still striking more than a century after having been composed. There are several versions of orchestral suites which Stravinsky derived from his ballet, but the 1919 is to me the most satisfying.
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