Suite from Hänsel und Gretel

Overture

Sandman’s Song

Evening Prayer

Dream Pantomime

Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel orginated - like at least some of Elgar’s Wand of Youth music at the other end of this programme - as a family entertainment. The earliest music in it was conceived in 1890 when the composer’s sister asked him to set four folk songs from the Hänsel und Gretel fairy tale (as told by the Brothers Grimm) for her children to sing. The songs were developed into a little play with music, again to be performed privately in Humperdinck’s sister’s house, and then into a full-scale opera, which was first produced at the Court Theatre in Weimar in 1893. It was a great success and has been performed regularly ever since, usually as a Christmas treat.

The Overture begins with the most memorable tune in the whole opera, the “Evening Prayer” which, although it is anticipated in Act 1, is definitively introduced in Act 2. Here it is intoned first by horns and bassoons and then developed by strings in a slow introduction ending with high, ethereal woodwind sounds. The tempo changes to admit a selection of lively dances, including Gretel’s almost as familiar “Brüderchen, komm tanz mit mir” from Act 1, but the sweet strains of the “Evening Prayer” rarely remain unheard for very long. The other three movements are all from Act 2 where the children, sent out to gather strawberries are lost in the wood. Frightened in the gathering darkness, they are consoled by the Sandman’s Song (“Der kleine Sandmann bin ich”) and, before they fall asleep, sing their Evening Prayer (“Abends will ich schlafen gehen”), beautifully scored in the original version as a duet for soprano and mezzo. A long and tender postlude for the orchestra leads directly into the Dream Pantomime as a ladder falls from heaven and fourteen angels descend to surround the sleeping children. Not surprisingly, this last movement also makes frequent, expressive allusions to the Evening Prayer.