French Masterworks

New York Philharmonic Carter Brey, cello

Orchestral Series

Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

Stéphane Denève brings inspiration from his native France, leading the New York Phil in Ravel’s adored Bolero, Debussy’s La mer, selections from Bizet’s L'Arlésienne, and Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, featuring Principal Cello Carter Brey.

Stéphane Denève, conductor
Carter Brey, cello

BIZET Selections from L'Arlésienne
SAINT-SAËNS Cello Concerto No. 1
DEBUSSY La mer
RAVEL Boléro

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Selections from the L’Arlésienne Suites (1872/76) GEORGES BIZET (1838-75)

Georges Bizet is remembered
chiefly as the composer of
Carmen, the 30th and last
of his operas, if one tallies
complete, incomplete, and projected
works. Only once was he drawn to the
allied genre of theatrical incidental
music, his score for Alphonse Daudet’s
drama L’Arlésienne (The Woman from
Arles), involving a steamy love triangle
among Provençal peasants in the wild
cowboy country of southern France.
He provided 27 musical sections. The
play opened in Paris on October 1, 1872,
and closed after 21 performances, but
Bizet’s music aroused much positive
comment. Daudet conceded, “It was
a most dazzling failure with the most
charming music in the world.”

Bizet selected four of the
movements for a concert suite (today
identified as Suite No. 1), premiered
in 1872; and then a second suite,
comprising entirely separate material,
was arranged by Ernest Guiraud in 1876.
The music was originally scored for an
orchestra of 26 players, but both Bizet
and Guiraud expanded it (as played
here) for full symphony orchestra
when they prepared their suites. From
Suite No. 1 we hear Carillon, where a
three-note motif represents ringing
of bells; a peaceful Adagietto; and a
good-humored Minuetto. From Suite
No. 2 come another minuet (this time
a Menuet, in French) and the dance
inspired Farandole, where a Provençal
tune melds with the famous “March of
the Kings” in clever counterpoint.

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 (1872) CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)

When he composed his Cello
Concerto No. 1, at the age of 37 in
November 1872, Camille Saint-Saëns
was highly regarded but had not yet
written the works for which he is most
famous today. His symphonic poem
Danse macabre, his opera Samson
and Delilah, his Third Symphony, and
his sui generis masterwork Carnival of
the Animals still lay in the future. His
biographer Stephen Studd suggests
that the composer’s sudden interest
in the cello—this concerto was
immediately preceded by a sonata
for the instrument—resulted from his
grieving a recently departed great-aunt.
“His feeling for the cello,” writes Studd,
“with its deep, dark tone and capacity
for both dignified and impassioned
utterance, was now rekindled by
the melancholy that set in after his
bereavement.” Though dependably
fervid, this concerto is elegiac only in a
short Tchaikovsky-esque interlude in the
finale (revisited near that movement’s
end). Still, the second movement—a
minuet introduced by strings, muted
and staccato—may underscore the
great-aunt’s connection to the music of
an earlier time. Reviewing its premiere,
the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris
reported, “We must say that the Cello
Concerto seems to us to be a beautiful
and good work of excellent sentiment
and perfect cohesiveness, and as usual
the form is of greatest interest.”

La Mer: Trois esquisses symphoniques (The Sea: Three Symphonic Sketches; 1903-05, rev. 1910) CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

“You are perhaps unaware that I
was intended for the noble career of
a sailor and have only deviated from
that path thanks to the quirk of fate,”
wrote Claude Debussy to his fellow
composer André Messager in 1903,
when he was composing the piece
that would grow into La Mer (The Sea).
“Even so,” he continued, “I’ve retained a
sincere devotion to the sea.” The piece
comprised “three symphonic sketches,”
for which he eventually provided titles
that offer three different perspectives
on his topic. A famous sea image
from the world of art also stimulated
Debussy: the Hokusai woodblock print
“The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa,”
widely known as simply “The Wave,” a
copy of which he hung in his study. He
had his publisher reproduce it on the
cover of the printed score.

The first movement‘s title, “From
Dawn till Noon on the Sea,” invited all
manner of clever ripostes. The Boston
critic Louis Elson, encountering the
piece in 1907, exclaimed that he “feared
we were to have a movement seven
hours long. It was not so long, but it
was terrible while it lasted.” The wry
but beneficent Erik Satie was wittier
still; after the world premiere, in 1905,
he exclaimed to Debussy, “Ah, my dear
friend, there’s one particular moment
that I found stunning, between half past
ten and a quarter to eleven!”

Boléro (1928) M AU R I C E R AV E L ( 1 8 7 5 - 1 9 3 7 )

The single sinuous melody of
Ravel’s Boléro repeats over and over
through a 15-minute span, accompanied
by a two-bar rat-a-tat-tat figure from
the snare drum, collapsing only in
the rupture of the final few measures.
From the nearly silent beginning, the
composer builds in a tour-de-force of
additive instrumentation, seizing upon
an astonishing variety of constantly
growing instrumental combinations.
What begins by occupying only three
separate lines of musical score swells
to fill huge pages of staves, and, as one
would expect, the volume increases
accordingly, from gentlest pianissimo
to grand fortissimo. Ravel wrote it as
a ballet score for the troupe of Ida
Rubinstein. He put off the project but,
in the end, arrived at the concept that
would make this one of his most famous
compositions. At the first orchestral
rehearsal, he was as astonished as
everyone else by the momentum his
piece conveyed, but he nonetheless
told his friends that he had no doubt
that so radical an experiment would
never find a place in normal orchestral
concerts. Wrong! It became an instant
mega-hit. Invitations to conduct the
piece poured into his mailbox and
today its niche in the symphonic
repertoire remains utterly secure.
“Malheureusement il est vide de musique,”
Ravel remarked—“Unfortunately, it
contains no music.” Audiences tend not
to agree with him about that.

Artist Biographies

Stéphane Denève

Photo Credit: Genevieve Caron

Carter Brey

Photo Credit: Chris Lee

PRESTO CLUB: Presto Club Night: Youth ages 8–14 are invited to attend pre-concert activities and social lawn experience on this concert. Click here to learn more.