I.  Entrée pour Ludovic le More

  II.  Lesquereade

 III.  Romanesque

 IV.  Ibérienne

  V.  Léda et I’Oiseau

 VI.  Courtante

VII. Salut final au Due de Milan

La Bal de Béatrice d'Este is a charming post-Romantic chamber work written by Reynaldo Hahn. The piece is a suite from his ballet of the same title. Its brief movements represent stylizations of Baroque Italian entertainment music. Writing the ballet Le Bal de Béatrice d'Este in Paris in 1905, but setting it in fifteenth-century Milan, Hahn blurs the line between Renaissance Italy and fin-desiècle France. Although the ballet does not seek to retell an actual historical occasion, the work is firmly based within a historical context. Hahn’s composition is in seven movements, scored for 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, percussion, 2 harps, and piano. Three of the inner movements are Renaissance dances (Lesquercade, Romanesque, Courante) interspersed with a portrait of Beatrice’s sister Isabella (Iberienne), and a musical impression of a Da Vinci painting (Léda et l’Oiseau). The Salut Final au Duc de Milan puts a regal bookend on the piece.

Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs of which he wrote more than 100. Hahn was a prolific composer. His vocal works include secular and sacred pieces, lyric scenes, cantatas, oratorios, operas, comic operas, and operettas. Orchestral works include concertos, ballets, tone poems, incidental music for plays and films. He wrote a range of chamber music, and piano works. He sang as well as played his own songs and made recordings as a soloist and accompanying other performers. After his death his music was neglected but from the late 20th century onward increasing interest has led to frequent performances of many of his works and recordings of all his songs and piano works, much of his orchestral music and some of his stage works.

 Program note and composer biography researched and compiled by Elisabeth Jackson