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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Composer of the Week: Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894): Episode 4: A Bouillabaisse

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Episode 4

Episode 4: A Bouillabaisse

A Bouillabaisse

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), A Bouillabaisse

The short rise and faster fall of Chabrier's comic opera, Le roi malgre lui.

Donald Macleod explains how the demise of Chabrier's final comic opera Le roi malgre lui on the Paris stage saw the composer's reputation spread in Germany.

The demise of Chabrier's brilliant comic opera, Le roi malgré lui, on the Paris stage sees the composer's reputation spread in Germany.

Chabrier must surely be one of the most likeable fellows to have graced this earth. It seems no-one had a bad word to say about him. His wide circle of friends included all the leading musicians, writers, poets and painters of the day. Chabrier owned a remarkable collection of impressionist paintings including several by Manet, who produced the best known portrait of the composer.

Emmanuel Chabrier's life slots into a fascinating point in French musical history. When he was born in 1841, Berlioz was already thirty-eight and famous, Saint-Saëns was six, while the rising stars of the future, Massenet and Fauré, were not yet born. Despite Wagner's dominance, and indeed Chabrier's own reverence for the German composer, Chabrier's music retains a staunchly Gallic individuality, with critics subsequently paying tribute to him as a "direct forerunner of the modern school." The reason for this may well relate, at least in part, to his studies. Chabrier was largely self-taught, and although he was better educated than most musical amateurs, he never followed the accepted route into the Paris Conservatoire or a similar institute. He trained first in law, only taking up full time composition in his thirties.

Today Donald Macleod looks at Chabrier's final comic opera, a work in which the riches and innovation of the music managed to overcome the deficiencies of a confusing plot and weak libretto. Fellow composer, Ravel, declared that its premiere had "changed the direction of French harmony."

Danse slave. Allegro con brio
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Neeme Järvi, conductor

Ode à la musique
Barbara Hendricks, soprano
Toulouse-Midi-Pyrénées Womens' Chorus
Capitole Toulouse Orchestra
Michel Plasson, conductor

Suite pastorale
Orchestra de la Suisse Romande
Neeme Järvi, conductor

Introduction & choeur dansé (Act 2, Le roi malgré lui)
Ah! Hurrah!
Chris de Moor, bass, Laski
Chorus of Radio France
New Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France
Charles Dutoit, conductor

O rêve éteint! Réveils funèbres (Act 3, Le roi malgré lui)
Barbara Hendricks, soprano, Minka
Isabel Garcisanz, soprano, Alexina
New Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France
Charles Dutoit, conductor.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Emmanuel Chabrier

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Emmanuel Chabrier, a composer whose originality is acknowledged by leading voices of French music in the 20th century

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Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Episode 4: A Bouillabaisse

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