Paul Dukas - The sorcerer’s apprentice

On Saturday, February 22nd at 8 pm, maestro Bertie Baigent debuts on the podium of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra.

The programme includes music by Paul Dukas, Maurice Ravel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

On the piano Cédric Tiberghien.

The concert will be broadcast on Rai Radio 3 

Florence, February 20th 2025 - Just twenty-four hours away from Anna Netrebko’s recital another appointment in the Maggio's winter calendar.  On Saturday, February 22nd 2025, at 8 pm the concert directed by maestro Bertie Baigent, which debuts not only on the podium of the Sala Grande and at the head of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra but also to the leadership of an Italian ensemble.

Maestro Baigent has drawn attention to himself as the winner of the Classical Prize and Symphonic Prize at the "Rotterdam International Competition" in 2022.  Since then he has had an international career leading the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the CBSO and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Also active on the opera stage, Baigent is co-founder and music director of the "Waterperry Opera Festival" where he has directed numerous productions including L'elisir d'amore by Donizetti, Carmen by Bizet and Il giro di vite by Britten.

In the programme an interesting and lively program that travels through a century and a half of great music: opening L'apprenti sorcier (The apprentice sorcerer), the famous symphonic joke by Paul Dukas, musical transposition of the homonymous ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe written exactly one hundred years before.

Following two compositions by Maurice Ravel: the Concerto in D major for piano and orchestra "for the left hand", commissioned to Ravel by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who - during the first world war - was mutilated of his right arm, and Pavane pour une infante défunte. This last work was written by the French musician, just twenty-four years old, when he was still a student at the Paris Conservatory, and was thought as a tribute to the Princess de Polignac. 

At the piano during the performance of Ravel’s Concerto in D major, Cédric Tiberghien, also making his debut on stage at Maggio.  An interpreter appreciated for his versatility, as evidenced by his vast repertoire, he has collaborated with some of the most important orchestras on the international scene, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also had an important career as a chamber musician and has received five Diapason d'Or awards, a coveted prize given by the critics of the French magazine "Diapason" to classical music recordings.

The concert concludes with one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s best-known symphonic compositions, the Symphony in C major K. 425, also known as Linz: it was written in 1783 and is the second symphony written by the genius from Salzburg following his move to Vienna. The name is derived from that of the Austrian city of Linz, where Mozart and his wife Constanze stopped briefly during their trip.

The programme:

Paul Dukas
L’apprenti sorcier  (The sorcerer’s apprentice)

Born in 1865, the Frenchman Paul Dukas was an esteemed composer and teacher (among his pupils were Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen). Particularly critical of his work, Dukas has left us a small number of works, including the symphonic joke L'Apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), which is undoubtedly the composer’s most famous and performed work. Inspired by the homonymous ballad of Wolfgang Goethe, L'appredista stregone was composed in 1897. The story tells of a young apprentice who, in the absence of his master, uses a magic formula to animate a broom, causing it to draw water from the river to bring it into the magician’s lair. However, the apprentice will no longer be able to stop the spell and in the end it will only be the return of the magician to prevent the flooding of the lair. At the beginning of the song Dukas proposes the main themes that will have a primary function in the score: the theme of the spell, the famous theme of the broom (associated with bassoons) the theme of water, which will then be developed with art generating surprising sounds and rich in humor.

Maurice Ravel
Concerto for piano and orchestra in D major "for the left hand"

Pavane pour une infante défunte

The Concerto for piano and orchestra in D major "for the left hand" was written by Ravel between 1929 and 1930 at the request of the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had suffered the mutilation of his right arm during the war. The concert was presented by Wittgenstein himself in Vienna in 1932 and aroused great interest. Ravel had managed to balance the relationship between soloist and orchestra without taking anything away from the sound thickness, creating an extremely expressive and rich in colors work that seemed destined for two hands. Although internally tripartite, the Concerto is in a single movement and adopts an improvisational style with many jazz effects. Suggestive is the opening entrusted to the orchestra’s grave sounds that create a gloomy and nebulous atmosphere from which germinate some thematic ideas until the entrance of the piano with a long and complex cadenza. In the course of the opera, the soloist will then be called to juggle between episodes of elegant rarefaction sound to others of incisive rhythmic vigor underlined by the lively orchestral accompaniment.

Like many other orchestral pieces by Ravel, the Pavane pour une infante défunte was initially composed for solo piano: born in 1899 it was then transcribed for chamber orchestra in 1910. Inspired by the figure of a Renaissance Infanta, Ravel built his piece on the rhythm of pavana, an ancient sixteenth-century court dance in moderate meter track. The Pavane is short and linear in its simplicity, distinguished by the delicate lyricism of the melody intoned first by the horn and then by the woods and by the ethereal and elegant harmonies that support it.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony in C major K. 425, Linz

Composed at the end of October 1783, the Symphony in C major K. 425 "Linz" owes its title to the town where Mozart was passing through and where he would hold a private academy. However, the musical programme lacked an opening piece and so Mozart hastily composed the symphony in time for the concert. Many of the stylistic choices on this page refer to Haydn’s symphonic model, from the brilliant instrumentation featuring trumpets and timpani, typical elements of festive celebratory occasions, to the setting of the four movements; for the first time, for example, Mozart prefaces the opening Allegro with an introductory Adagio, a distinctive feature of many works by Haydn. Followed by a second tempo in the rhythm of Siciliana (dance frequently used by the illustrious colleague), a pretty Minuet of rustic character and a Presto full of sudden dynamic contrasts and counterpoint episodes