Petite Suite (Jeux d’enfants)

One of the most attractive of all Bizet’s scores, his Petite Suite consists of the composer’s own orchestral arrangements of five movements from his Jeux d’enfants - a collection of children’s piano duets so successful in charming all age groups that it inspired a distinguished tradition of similar works, including Debussy’s Petite Suite, Fauré’s Dolly, and Ravel’s Mother Goose. As Schumann had already demonstrated in his Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), genius doesn’t always come in large formats or with profoundly philosophical intentions.

At one point, shortly before he dispatched Jeux d’enfants to his publishers in 1871, Bizet was thinking of calling the opening march Les Soldats de plomb (Lead Soldiers), which indicates exactly what children’s game he had in mind here. Coloured - as the new title Trompette et tambour (Trumpet and Drum) suggests - by little fanfares and discreet drum rolls, it is a delightful combination of woodwind tunes in the outer sections with a mildly aggressive fugal section for strings in the middle. La poupée features muted strings and expressive woodwind soloists in a cradle song for an evidently much-loved doll. After being set in motion by a loud chord at the beginning, La Toupie (The Top) spins in buzzing figuration in the background while flutes and pizzicato violins dance around it, pausing from time to time as the spinning slows down. If Petit mari, petite femme (Little Husband, Little Wife) is a somewhat unequal duet, with most of the melodic sentiment awarded to violins, Bizet’s string writing in this exquisite little love scene is no less resourceful for that. The Galop is a dance closely related to the can-can and, while that would not be a subject for discussion in the bourgeois households targeted by Bizet’s piano duets, this brilliant little finale generates more than a little of the exuberance associated with its disreputable relation.

Gerald Larner©2003