Solo for Oboe or Violin-'The title only appears frivolous to those who have lived little. With the passage of time the seasons that pass the differences in quantity and quality of light of temperature and weather become of ever greater importance in the meaning of our individual existence. This transformation follows the path of our lives and often mimes in front of our very own eyes incredulous and wondrous events that we can only experience once in a lifetime: our birth our blossoming our aging and our death. Such a subject could well take up ten years of my life. This was the case. Nevertheless everything started very innocently with a proposition from my friend François Leleux to write him a double concerto that he could play with Natalia Gutman initially named ‘Musica Concertante’. It was with this second proposition from François for another double concerto this time with Lisa Batiashvili that the idea came to me for a cycle of four concertos with each time a different instrument from the string quartet to join the oboe. The automnal colours of the cello are a perfect match for the retrospective nature of the first completed concerto in the cycle. ‘concerto nostalgico l’automne’ whilst the love and the first child of the Leleux-Batiashvili couple could only bring Spring to mind hence the ‘Concerto amoroso le printemps’ was born. When Jean-Marc Bador asked me to be an associate of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris for two years it was quite naturally that I thought of completing this cycle for François Leleux with winter ‘Concerto tenebroso’ created in January 2010 with Lise berthaud playing the viola. All that remained was for me to conclude with a work that reunited all four protagonsits. It was summer the ‘Concerto luminoso’ which took on this role’.

The première of Daudet's play L'Arlésienne with incidental music by Bizet given at the Théâtre du Vaudeville on 30 September 1872 was a devastating event for both playwright and composer and the production was removed from the repertory after 19 performances. The critic Johannès Weber however was alert to the quality of Bizet's score and suggested that the composer should excerpt and rescore several pieces for the Concerts populaires where 'the lovely music would be better appreciated than at the Vaudeville'. Bizet must have moved rather quickly to follow Weber's suggestion for the première of the first Arlésienne suitetook place only six weeks later at the Concerts populaires on 10 November 1872 and the work in its new abridged form was soon taken up by many other orchestras. Bizet however did not turn to preparing a second suite from L'Arlésienne. Some four years after Bizet's death the success of the first suite may have prompted his original publisher to commission the arrangement of more excerpts from the Arlésienne MS from Bizet's good friend Ernest Guiraud who had earlier written recitatives and put together a ballet for Carmen.