L' Arlésienne Suite No. 2

The suite opens with "Pastorale," a warm, pastoral movement built from long, singing lines that suggest open countryside, with the woodwinds trading gentle phrases over a steady accompaniment.

"Intermezzo" follows, darker and more urgent, with a hushed choral-like passage for winds and brass that gives way to a more agitated, restless middle section before settling back into calm.

The third movement, "Menuet," is lighter and more intimate. A solo flute carries the main melody over plucked strings, and the orchestration stays delicate throughout, almost like chamber music borrowed from an earlier era.

The suite closes with "Farandole," the movement most listeners remember. It layers two folk-derived tunes, a stately march-like theme and a whirling, faster dance, building through repetition and thickening orchestration to a bright, driving finish that brings the whole work to a rousing close.

Across the four movements, listen for how Bizet uses a small set of recurring instrumental colors, plaintive winds, plucked strings, brassy fanfares, to sketch a sense of place rather than tell a literal story. The suite works as a sequence of moods rather than a narrative, so first-time listeners can simply enjoy each movement as its own vivid postcard.

Bizet wrote incidental music in 1872 for Alphonse Daudet's play "L'Arlésienne," a Provençal drama, scoring it for a small theater orchestra. The play had a short run, but Bizet's music impressed listeners, and he soon arranged four movements into a concert suite, later known as Suite No. 1. Bizet died in 1875 without arranging a second suite himself. His friend, the composer Ernest Guiraud, assembled Suite No. 2 in 1879 from additional music in the score, orchestrating it more fully for full symphonic forces than Bizet's original theater band. The result, including the popular closing "Farandole," became a concert staple, helping secure the reputation of a score that began as modest incidental music for a play now rarely performed.