Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Première rhapsodie
Claude Debussy, arr. Geoffrey Gordon
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Sang Yoon Kim, clarinet
Gábor Takács-Nagy, conductor
Recorded June 9-10, 2023 at the Ordway Concert Hall
Watch the full version in our free Concert Library: content.thespco.org/music/concert-library/composition/premiere-rhapsodie-first-rhapsody-claude-debussy
About the Music:
Claude Debussy had a typical start for a French composer, attending the Paris Conservatory and dabbling in the modern sounds of Richard Wagner, but his outlook expanded dramatically in the 1890s, setting him on a course to reshape the aesthetics of concert music. Influenced by sounds he heard at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris (especially Javanese gamelan), and drawing on friendships with poets and painters, Debussy filtered his emerging ideas about symbols and impressions into a new musical language, one in which sounds were celebrated for their sensory appeal, independent of their harmonic function.
The once-controversial Debussy was an elder statesman of French music by 1909, when he joined the board of his alma mater at the invitation of the school’s director, Gabriel Fauré. The next year, Debussy supplied the conservatory’s clarinetists a final exam for the ages in the form of his Première rhapsodie, originally scored for clarinet and piano.
Debussy published his own orchestral arrangement in 1911, using a lavish ensemble that included 11 winds, six brass players, and two harps. For this performance, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra teamed up with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta to commission a more intimate arrangement using an orchestra about half that size. Geoffrey Gordon, a composer renowned for his concertos and other orchestral scores that are frequently performed in the US and Europe, recreated the gossamer textures of Debussy’s orchestration, with string parts that are often divided into many delicate strands.
Program Note © 2023 Aaron Grad
Première rhapsodie
Claude Debussy, arr. Geoffrey Gordon
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Sang Yoon Kim, clarinet
Gábor Takács-Nagy, conductor
Recorded June 9-10, 2023 at the Ordway Concert Hall
Watch the full version in our free Concert Library: content.thespco.org/music/concert-library/composition/premiere-rhapsodie-first-rhapsody-claude-debussy
About the Music:
Claude Debussy had a typical start for a French composer, attending the Paris Conservatory and dabbling in the modern sounds of Richard Wagner, but his outlook expanded dramatically in the 1890s, setting him on a course to reshape the aesthetics of concert music. Influenced by sounds he heard at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris (especially Javanese gamelan), and drawing on friendships with poets and painters, Debussy filtered his emerging ideas about symbols and impressions into a new musical language, one in which sounds were celebrated for their sensory appeal, independent of their harmonic function.
The once-controversial Debussy was an elder statesman of French music by 1909, when he joined the board of his alma mater at the invitation of the school’s director, Gabriel Fauré. The next year, Debussy supplied the conservatory’s clarinetists a final exam for the ages in the form of his Première rhapsodie, originally scored for clarinet and piano.
Debussy published his own orchestral arrangement in 1911, using a lavish ensemble that included 11 winds, six brass players, and two harps. For this performance, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra teamed up with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta to commission a more intimate arrangement using an orchestra about half that size. Geoffrey Gordon, a composer renowned for his concertos and other orchestral scores that are frequently performed in the US and Europe, recreated the gossamer textures of Debussy’s orchestration, with string parts that are often divided into many delicate strands.
Program Note © 2023 Aaron Grad
