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Photo Credit: Gerard Collett

Photo Credit: Stephan Rabold

Ravel Daphnis et Chloé

New York Philharmonic Seong-Jin Cho, piano
Orchestral Series
Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater
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The New York Philharmonic concludes the 2025 Orchestral Series with an alluring all-Ravel program conducted by Rafael Payare. The evening features the lively jazz-inspired Piano Concerto in G major, performed by the acclaimed Seong-Jin Cho, and concludes with the lavish and evocative Daphnis et Chloé featuring the Colorado Symphony Chorus.

LAWN SCREEN: Bravo! Vail is pleased to offer the lawn screen experience at this evening's concert.

Featured Artists

Rafael Payare

conductor

Seong-Jin Cho

piano

Program Highlights

Rafael Payare, conductor
Seong-Jin Cho, piano
Colorado Symphony Chorus

RAVEL Piano Concerto
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Program Notes

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1929-31)

(21 minutes)

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
     Allegramente
     Adagio assai
     Presto

This past March 7, the world celebrated the 150th birthday of Maurice Ravel, one of the most indispensable of 20thcentury composers. He hailed from the Basque country, on France’s border with Spain, but he lived most of his life in or near the French capital and his works represent the musical epitome of Parisian soigné. He composed his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra from 1929 to 1931, presumably incorporating some material he had written many years earlier for a piano concerto on Basque themes that he never completed. He occasionally took colleagues by surprise by revealing that pieces they didn’t know about were well along in their gestation. So it was that the pianist Marguerite Long recalled a gathering sometime in the 1920s, when he announced that he was writing a concerto for her. She recounted: “’Do you mind if it ends pianissimo and with trills?’ he asked. ‘Of course not,’ I replied, only too happy to realize the dream of all virtuosi.” She then heard nothing until November 1931, when he telephoned saying he was dropping by with the manuscript. “I had hardly composed myself when he entered holding out the precious pages. Hastily I turned to the last page to look for the pianissimo and the trills: they had become fortissimo and percussive ninths!”

When he described this concerto to the critic M.D. Calvocoressi, Ravel called it “a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.” He continued: “The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not ‘for’ but ‘against’ the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto ‘Divertissement.’ Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title ‘Concerto’ should be sufficiently clear.” One quotes Ravel here from a sense of duty. In fact, his comment confuses more than it elucidates. We may disagree with what he seems to imply about the presumed frothiness of piano concertos of Mozart—perhaps even about those of Saint-Saëns— and, indeed, of his own capacity for profundity, certainly in the Adagio assai of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with its almost unending melody spun out directly from the heart.

INTERMISSION

Daphnis et Chloé, Choreographic Symphony in Three Parts (1909-12)

(57 minutes)

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Daphnis et Chloé, Choreographic Symphony in Three Parts (1909-12)

     Part One (A Meadow on the Edge of a Sacred Wood)
     Introduction and Religious Dance
       General Dance—Dorcon’s Grotesque
       Dance—Daphnis’ Light and Graceful
       Dance—Lyceion’s Dance—Nocturne:
       Slow, Mysterious Dance of the Nymphs

     Part Two (The Pirates’ Camp)
     Introduction—War Dance—Chloé’s Dance of Supplication

     Part Three (Same Landscape as the First Tableau, as Night Ends)
     Sunrise—Pantomime (The Loves of Pan and Syrinx)—General Dance (Bacchanal)

When he was approached about writing a new ballet for impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Ravel was understandably excited. The Ballets Russes had arrived in Paris in 1909 and a commission from the company quickly became a sign that a composer had arrived at the summit of cultural life in the city that prided itself as the summit of culture. Early productions established the credentials of the company’s core personnel: director Diaghilev, choreographer Michel Fokine, designer Leon Bakst. Fokine had been urging Diaghilev to consider a ballet on the myth of Daphnis and Chloé, and in early 1909 he began working with Ravel to devise a suitable scenario. For their source they turned to a pastoral romance attributed to the third-century (C.E.) Greek author Longus, as filtered through the 16th-century French poet Jacques Amyot. From the outset the going was not easy. In June 1909, Ravel wrote to a friend: “I must tell you that I’ve just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night, work until 3 a.m. What complicates things is that Fokine doesn’t know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian. In spite of the interpreters, you can imagine the savor of these meetings.”

Work continued slowly, and “the next Russian season” came and went with Daphnis et Chloé still a work in progress. Ravel fell farther and farther behind schedule—so much so that at one point Diaghilev came close to canceling the project. But his better judgment ruled and the ballet, structured as a single act divided into three scenes, finally made its way to the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet about two years after Diaghilev had hoped, with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the role of Daphnis and Tamara Karsavina as Chloé. In a nutshell: Daphnis, a shepherd, loves Chloé, a shepherdess. They rebuff the advances of the cowherd Dorcon, but Daphnis is unable to prevent a band of pirates from abducting Chloé. She is rescued with the help of the god Pan; the lovers are reunited at dawn; and everyone dances in celebration.

Because the ballet was premiered at the end of the company’s season, it got only two performances. Although it was revived in Paris the next season and in 1914 received a production in London, Daphnis et Chloé has enjoyed only sporadic success in the world of ballet. Ravel’s score, however, has achieved the status of a classic, both in its complete form and through the orchestral suites the composer extracted from it. The dancers of the Ballets Russes were utterly befuddled by the 5/4 meter which pervades the “General Dance” finale of Daphnis et Chloé. It was reported that the only way they managed to keep their five-beat measures straight was by incessantly repeating the mantra “Sergei Dia-ghi-lev.”

Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

530 S Frontage Rd E Vail, CO 81657 Venue information