Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

The French composer Maurice Ravel was deeply interested in Spanish culture and music. One contributing factor was that his mother had Basque roots, grew up in Madrid, and spoke fluent Spanish. It is therefore in some ways both delightful and unsurprising that Rapsodie Espagnole became Ravel’s first significant orchestral work.

In Shéhérazade for soprano and orchestra, the focus instead is on an interest in the Middle East. The music is based on One Thousand and One Nights, the famous folktale collection from the areas around the Silk Road. Ravel had already composed an overture inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. This time, three exotic texts by friend, poet and artist Tristan Klingsor served as his starting point, and he created a work of musical impressionism that sparks the imagination and in which his fantastic orchestration truly shines.

Another impressionistic masterpiece is Debussy’s La Mer, inspired by painter Joseph Turner (1775-1851), but especially by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose woodcut The Great Wave off Kanagawa adorned the title page of the score.

The guest performance by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra is led by the newly appointed chief conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens.