Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)
Overture to Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) (1816)
Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 8 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 19, 1935; Isaac Van Grove, conductor

Gioachino Rossini is especially known for his melodically enchanting and rhythmically vivacious overtures. Between 1810 and 1829, Rossini wrote 39 operas, both serious and comic and in both Italian and French, churning out multiple operatic hits each year. Many of his operas are still mainstays of the repertoire today, but his overtures have gained a second life on the concert stage and in popular culture. Perhaps the most famous of these is the overture to The Barber of Seville, thanks in part to Looney Tunes’ 1950 cartoon short Rabbit of Seville.

Giuseppe Verdi, Rossini’s successor as master of Italian opera, considered The Barber of Seville the greatest comic opera ever written. Composed in 1816 in just two weeks, the opera sparkles with Rossini’s signature wit and bel canto vocalism. Contrary to what one would expect, the overture does not contain any of the melodic themes of the opera. That is because it was recycled from two earlier operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elizabeth, Queen of England. Nevertheless, it has now become intrinsically linked with The Barber of Seville, serving as a perfect prelude to the comedic hijinks and love story to come.

Manuel de Falla (1876–1946)
Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) (1909)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, strings, and solo piano
Performance time: 23 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: June 29, 1994; Christopher Wilkins, conductor and Jorge Frederico Osorio, piano

Before the outbreak of World War I, Spanish composer Manuel de Falla spent seven fruitful years in Paris, socializing and collaborating with such influential composers as Ravel, Stravinsky, Albéniz, and Debussy. Falla especially admired Debussy, lauding his work as “music’s point of departure as an emancipated art.” Debussy’s sound world and approach to form would influence Falla’s compositional style, which blends Spanish musical elements with tenets of French Impressionism.

Debussy’s influence is manifest in Falla’s sumptuous work for piano and orchestra, Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), in its orchestration, use of whole tone chords, and conception as a set of nocturnes. That said, its grounding in the rhythms and melodies of Andalusian folk music makes it entirely Falla’s own. Falla originally conceived the work in 1909 as a set of four nocturnes for solo piano. However, Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes—the work’s eventual dedicatee—suggested he expand it to include orchestra. Falla took his advice and eventually completed Noches in 1915 after returning to Spain during the war.

Although scored for solo piano and orchestra, Noches is not really a concerto. The piano is more integrated into the orchestral texture than in a typical concerto, where the soloist is often pitted against the orchestra in a “battle” of sorts. Plus, the movements are not structured like those of a concerto but are more freeform. Falla called them “symphonic impressions” that “evoke places, sensations, and sentiments” of his Andalusian homeland. Still, Falla cautioned against thinking of the work as explicitly programmatic: “The music has no pretensions to being descriptive; it is merely expressive. But something more than the sound of festivals and dances has inspired these ‘evocations in sound,’ for melancholy and mystery have their part also.”

The first movement, “En el Generalife,” takes us to the Generalife gardens outside the Alhambra, the great Moorish palace and fortress in Granada. Falla captures the region’s confluence of Arab and Spanish cultures with evocations of flamenco and guitar music, which contrast with more stentorian orchestral episodes that might represent the Sultan presiding from the palace. The second movement, “Danza Lejana” (“A Distant Dance”), does not suggest a specific place so much as the passion of flamenco. The darkly sensual dance crashes straight into “En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba.” Again, the spirit of Spanish dance permeates the whole movement, with the piano’s rapid repeated notes imitating guitar tremolos.

Franz Liszt (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by Ferruccio Busoni) (1811–1886)
Rhapsodie espagnole, S. 254 (1858)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings, and solo piano
Performance time: 15 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 22, 1945; Nicolai Malko, conductor and Beatrice Eppinelle, piano

“The musical sun, which set at Liszt’s death, shines again through Busoni,” German writer and editor Adolf Mirus wrote in 1901. Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) was one of the greatest promotors of Franz Liszt’s legacy. A prolific writer and thinker as well as a pianist and composer, Busoni helped to change the prevailing attitude toward Liszt in the early 20th century. At the time, Liszt was primarily remembered as a piano virtuoso, but as a composer, he was overshadowed by Wagner. In programming, transcribing, and producing authoritative editions of Liszt’s music, Busoni hoped to reveal and expand upon Liszt’s revolutionizing of harmony, form, and pianistic technique.

Busoni emulated Liszt in several ways, both in his piano technique and overarching ideas regarding music. He and Liszt considered compositions living entities subject to revision or transformation, hence the multiple versions of many of Liszt’s works and both composers’ liberal approach to transcription, which blurs the line between arranging and composing. One such example is Busoni’s arrangement of Rhapsodie espagnole (1894) for solo piano and orchestra. It is based on Liszt’s solo piano piece Rhapsodie espagnole S254/R90 “Folies d’Espagne et Jota aragonesa” (1855), itself a substantial reworking of an earlier piece on Spanish themes from 1845. In supporting the piano soloist with orchestral textures, Busoni’s arrangement expands the piano’s dynamic range and brings out the Spanish character of the piece by including tambourines and castanets.

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Bolero (1928)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn and oboe d'amore, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, and strings
Performance time: 13 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: September 2, 1937; George Dasch, conductor

“I’ve written only one masterpiece—Bolero,” Maurice Ravel once said. “Unfortunately, there’s no music in it.” Although Ravel dismissed the work, Bolero has since become one of the most beloved and recognizable pieces of classical music. In 1928, Ravel was commissioned to compose a piece of Spanish flavor for Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein. Strapped for time, he initially wanted to orchestrate parts of Isaac Albéniz’s piano suite Iberia, but another composer already had exclusive rights. While on vacation in the Basque port town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Ravel came up with an idea. He would repeat a short melody over a repeated bolero rhythm for as long as the piece needed to be.

Ravel’s economy of means reveals his genius as an orchestrator, as orchestration is essentially the only variable in the piece. Bolero begins pianissimo with plucked low strings and a snare drum ostinato. The work is a feat of endurance and concentration for all involved, but especially for the percussionist, as this rhythmic figure repeats across the entire 15-minute work. The flute is the first to intone the exotic-sounding melody. This theme is repeated 18 times by different solo instruments and combinations of instruments in a gradual crescendo to fortissimo. Ravel employs all the orchestral colors at his disposal, including less-common instruments such as the oboe d’amore, E-flat and bass clarinet, piccolo trumpet, and soprano and tenor saxophones. The incessant repetition and stubborn adherence to the key of C major creates enormous tension. This tension is finally released in a brief shift into E major before obscene trombone and saxophone glissandi and cymbal crashes signal the end.

—Katherine Buzard