Wizards the world over didn’t wait for the Weasley brothers to make magic synonymous with stupidity. Already, during the 19th century in Germany, the sorcerer’s apprentices of Lausspeck and other Germanic Hogwarts were playing with brooms in less-than-orthodox ways. Case in point, the young whippersnapper from Goethe’s poem who in the absence of his master believes he can make the mops and buckets do the cleaning chores that are incumbent on him to do, before discovering the hard way that one should not invoke with impunity powers that one does not control! The symphonic poem which Paul Dukas drew from that tale reached a wide audience through its use in Fantasia. And rightly so: that remarkable, light-hearted piece is a moment of pure musical pleasure. But from which wizard of sound did Ravel learn his unique, preternatural art? Emotively compelling, and replete with thoughtful nostalgia and innocent candour, Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) makes us relive with our child-like hearts the tales that defined the infancy of successive generations. Like Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and Tom Thumb awakening from a long forgetful sleep to return and haunt our amazed and suddenly younger ears. The biting cruelty of fairy tales is not absent from Gabriel Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Indeed, he paints with poignant and deeply moving compassion the secret nascent love of two protagonists with tragic destinies. Finally, the magic of cellist Astrig Siranossian and her subtle and profound playing will shine through in the appealing moirés of Saint-Saëns’ Concerto —a masterpiece of the genre— to conclude a programme devoted to some of the greatest wizards of French music
