L'apres-midi d'un toreador (2001)
for flute ensemble

Information
Duration: 5'00"
Premiere: 9th February 2001
Composed for Het Nederlands Fluitorkest
Published by Giel Vleggaar

Programme notes
Written as an interlude for a program of Debussy piano preludes arranged for flute orchestra, L'apres-midi d'un toreador mockingly sports a drunken Debussy, whose frustration over the succes of his younger colleague Igor Stravinsky knows no end. After all, the scandal surrounding the reception of Debussy's Jeux was completely eclipsed a month later by the premiere of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. Inspired by Debussy's Iberia, Vleggaar mixes wholenote-scales, Sacre-quotes and Spanish bravado to a doomed climax - Debussy imagining being a bullfighter, Hemingway avant la lettre, yet ending up ungraciously in a drunken stupor on the sidewalk


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