大象传媒

Charles Hazlewood and the 大象传媒 Concert Orchestra explore how the foxtrot of the dance halls of the 1920s and 40s had a creative impact on the imagination of 20th-century composers such as Maurice Ravel, John Adams and Peter Maxwell Davies.

The iconic sounds of the popular foxtrots, which reached mass audiences through the wind-up gramophone, through the dance halls and through radio, have become a useful vehicle with which some composers have chosen to present extra-musical and sometimes ironic references in their 'serious' music.

Charles analyses the foxtrot itself and considers how Ravel used the dance in his opera L'enfant et Les Sortileges to evoke the spirit of his times. He then examines how American composer, John Adams uses the distinctive sounds of the dance played on a 78 rpm record as the basis for short orchestral concert work, The Chairman Dances. Finally he explores how Peter Maxwell Davies's recollection of the foxtrots of his childhood culminated in observations about political and moral responsibility in his St Thomas Wake for orchestra.