Arlequin
|
This article is a stub. If you can help add information to it,
please join the WRP and visit the FAQ (left sidebar) for information. |
Subtitle: Concerto Burlesque for Piano and Wind Orchestra
General Info
Year: 1998
Duration: c. 19:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Unknown
Cost: Score and Parts - Unknown
Movements (played without pause)
- Sonnestes et Campanelles
- La gueule d’enfer
- Charivari
- Masca
- Danse Moresca
Instrumentation
(Needed - please join the WRP if you can help.)
Errata
None discovered thus far.
Program Notes
Arlequin was written in 1998 and premiered one year later, in Copenhagen, Denmark, by the Lyngby Taarbek Concert Band, Per Salo as piano soloist, and composer Martin Åkerwall conducting.
Åkerwall’s work takes its starting point in Harlequin’s figure. The tradition of this figure is linked to the carnival, pagan rites and contact with underground forces and creatures. The keywords that are in the medieval times was linked to Harlequin figure and carnival are the concepts of life and death, high and low, passion, sexuality, devilry fertility, ecstasy and especially chaos.
- Program Note from WASBE
Arlequin is invoked at the beginning of the concerto by the piano through the delicate repetition of tone A, Arlequin's initial capital. A faint sound of small bells proclaims Arlequin yet unseen but present.
Soon we are down in the underworld universe. La gueule d’enfer, with its infernal rumbling, leads us on the journey into the sensual teasing carnival parade, Charivari. Arlequin puts on his other carnival attributes, beak nose, cockscomb, and rooster spurs. He hangs his bells on his large wing ears, and dances, gesticulating convulsively with birdlike sounds, bashing, scraping and cheering in a deafening Curucuco.
At night in the moonlight, we meet the creepy demonic female elders, Masca. They eat children. At the same time destructive and life-giving. Life and death in a single image.
With Danse Moresca we see new sides of Arlequin’s nuances. Now he shows up as the Creation and the erotic fertile.
We end up in a hell of a game, Inferno. Chaos has taken over. The infernal rumbling we remember from La geuele d’enfer will rise again. Our underground journey is coming to an end. Arlequin leaves with a devilish smile, by the same road he came in, through his name’s first letter.”
- Program Note by composer
Media
- Audio: Reference recording. Østervangkirkens kammerkor (Martin Åkerwall, conductor; Jasia Nielsen, mezzo; Rikke Sandberg, piano)]
- Audio: Reference recording. Lyngby Taarbek Concert Band (Martin Åkerwall, conductor; Per Salo, piano)
State Ratings
None discovered thus far.
Performances
To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project
Works for Winds by This Composer
- Arlequin (1998)
Resources
- "ARLEQUIN – Concerto Burlesque for Piano and Wind Orchestra by Martin Åkerwall (Denmark, 1965)." WASBE. Web. (Featured as WASBE’s Composition of the Week, 27 November 2023). Accessed 27 November 2023