Dolci Show #22: Debussy Minuet and Saint-Saëns Oboe Sonata

Minuet from Suite Bergamasque (1890-1905)                Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
In 1889, Claude Debussy, already an accomplished and innovative composer, heard Javanese gamelan music at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and soon changed Western music by demonstrating how music could be structured in scales and rhythms far removed from the rules then taught at the Paris Conservatoire. This piece was written for piano solo and arranged for oboe and harp or piano by the harpist Susan Jolles and the oboist Bert Lucarelli. 

Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1921)                           Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Camille Saint-Saëns wrote this joyful oboe sonata in a year of sadness at the end of his life, self-exiled in Algiers. Each of its three movements is a tone poem with its own mood and locale. The first movement, a Barcarolle, paints a watery scene. Opening calmly, the tempo increases like an afternoon sea breeze, then returns to calmness. The second movement suggests a solitary shepherd sounding a horn call across a magnificent valley, then piping a lilting Siciliano and closing with a farewell horn call. The finale is a Fandango, with sounds of frenzied castanets and the stamping boots of Spanish dancers.