Alain Altinoglu conducts Stravinsky and Bizet

In Pulcinella, Igor Stravinsky arranged various fragments attributed to the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – one of his favourite composers. However, as it later turned out, only ten numbers of the ballet music derive from Pergolesi. The other sources include trio sonatas by Domenico Gallo, harpsichord suites by Carlo Ignazio Monza, and concerti by a certain Count van Wassenaer, but this does not take away from Stravinsky’s enchanting arrangements. The premiere in Paris in 1920 was a resounding success, and as a result, the composer soon created a suite for the concert hall, which is still extremely popular today.

Georges Bizet, on the other hand, composed his C major Symphony as a teenager – inspired by the transcription of Charles Gounod’s D major Symphony for four-hand piano. The composition, with its exuberant Rossini-style energy, is in no way inferior to the youthful works of Mozart, Schubert or Mendelssohn. Yet Bizet never sought to have it published. The work was soon forgotten and was only rediscovered by chance much later in a pile of manuscripts in the library of the Conservatoire de Paris. The conductor and composer Felix Weingartner produced the first edition and conducted the posthumous premiere, which caused a sensation in Basel in 1936. Today, it is hard to imagine the international concert stage without Bizet’s C major Symphony.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Alain Altinoglu