Göteborgs Konserthus VÄGUS Winter Concert

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun In 1889, the centenary of the French Revolution was to be celebrated. One wonders how the conversation went in the anniversary committee: "This is the most important event in the history of civilization! The whole world must be involved! We are building a tower to heaven! Telegraph Gustave!" Sometimes it pays to aim for the stars: the Eiffel Tower was built and all the people of the world came to the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889. Industrialism and machines were celebrated in a Galerie des machines, while various indigenous peoples were exposed in the "human zoo" that fascinated Europeans in the 19th century. The 27-year-old Claude Debussy was one of the visitors among steam engines and constructed villages. He was most impressed by the gamelan orchestra from Java. This was before the era of the radio and the gramophone record and few people had heard this exotic and evocative percussion music with gongs, bells and drums accompanying dance and shadow theatre. Debussy was fascinated by the timbres and fifth-tone scales that became apparent in much of his future music. An example is Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun with its falling flute motif and ancient cymbals, crotales, which play a small but important role in the piece. These little cymbals sparkle like stars with brilliant reverberations in the shimmering orchestral chords. Debussy's 1894 orchestral piece was inspired by the poem L'après-midi d'un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé, the Symbolist poet with an unrivaled sense of linguistic nuances and timbres (he himself saw his poetry as music). That the piece was titled "prelude" is because, according to some sources, Debussy planned a three-movement suite with prelude, interlude and paraphrase finale, but only completed the prelude.

Kim Phipps has been conductor and artistic director of Västra Götaland's Youth Orchestra since the start in 2000. He has also been artistic director of Läcköoperan since 2003 and is conductor of the award-winning Swedish Chamber Orchestra, which he also founded. Kim Phipps was born in London and received his early musical training as a chorister at New College, Oxford. He took his B.A. as a Choral Scholar at King's College, Cambridge and went on to study singing at the Guildhall School in London. Conducting studies in Munich and Manchester followed and he made his professional debut at the Gothenburg Opera in 1985. The next ten years were largely devoted to opera with engagements at Sadlers Wells and English National Opera in London, Krefeld in Germany, and Malmö in Sweden. In 1994 Phipps moved to Sweden and has since then lived in Gothenburg. Although opera is still an important feature of his career, orchestral and choral work is now equally important. Kim Phipps has conducted most of the professional orchestras in Sweden including the Gothenburg Symphony.