"Carmen Fantasy" for Flute & Piano, by: Francois Borne--Alexandra Langley

Monday, May 6, 2024
Happy Monday! Today marks the continuation of a long-awaited series on my TH-cam Channel. This is my 6-part series called "My 1st Artist Diploma Flute Recital"! Over the next weeks, I will share a new installment of my most recent recital.
.
We continue the recital program with the grand opus! This is Francois Borne’s “Carmen Fantasy”. François Borne is a French composer, professor, and virtuosic flutist famous for his technical improvements to the flute. He is notably remembered for his romantic staple piece of flute repertoire, Fantasie Brillante on Themes from Bizet’s Carmen. His publication of the Carmen Fantasy was published in 1877, drawing on themes and variations from George Bizet’s famous opera, Carmen. Borne opens the Fantasy with a short piano introduction displaying the anticipating doom. The flute emerges and opens as Carmen’s Act 1 entrance with its “improvised” melody filled with material not heard in the original opera. He intends that melody to illustrate a bird which Carmen alludes to. Following the bird melody, the menacing “Fate Motive” enters and repeats throughout the opera as an omen of death. The famous Habanera theme arrives in its original form signaling the third section of the work. The flute immediately repeats the theme in two large variations. The first variation is triplet-focused with cascading arpeggiated figures filling in the empty space between the original melody’s notes. The second variation uses the same cascading effect in a duple-based variation with 8th and 16th note passages. Both variations create effective contrast in dynamics and articulations. has been rewritten by several flutists over the past 150 years with their own takes on the variations and other editorial changes. Following the Habanera, the Les Dragons d’Alcala military theme plays as a brief interlude leading into the grand last section. The finale highlights the Song of the Toréadors (the most familiar of operatic themes). As the piano plays the Toreadors Song, the flute improvises rapidly leading to the brilliant grand ends. I shall link the entire video in my bio. I hope you enjoy the beginning of my recital! 💐😄🎶❤️🪈🩷🌹
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Alexandra Langley and my mission is to take you on a journey through my flute music.
Check out my website
www.alexandralangleyflutist.com/
Follow me on Instagram
@alangleyflute
Follow me on Facebook
/ alangleyflute123
Business Inquiries: [e-mail]