The Loeillet family originated in what is now Belgium and confusingly included a Jean Baptiste François Loeillet who was the father of our composer, Jean Baptiste Loillet (1680-1730), born in Ghent but settled in London about 1705, after which he was known as John Loeillet. Still more confusingly he had a cousin of exactly the same name who was born eight years later in Ghent and spent most of his career in Lyon; he styled himself "Loeillet de Gant" (1688-1720). 
	It is not clear which of these cousins composed the Toccata performed here in a harp transcription by Marcel Grandjany. John Loeillet published his works in London--keyboard suites, trio sonatas (for recorder and oboe), and works for solo recorder. Loeillet de Gant published five different sets of sonatas, also for wind instruments (mostly recorder) and published in Amsterdam.
	The Toccata may have been transcribed from an unpublished organ work, in which case it is probably by the younger Loeillet de Gant, because his musical materials, located in Ghent and Lyon, would likely have been more accessible to Grandjany than those in London.


Toccata - Loillet

Respighi wrote music of extraordinary color and orchestral brilliance, partly, no doubt, a consequence of his having studied orchestration with Rimsky Korsakov during the years he served as principal violist in the orchestra of the St. Petersburg opera. Though his best known works are the three large suites celebrating various facets of life in his native Rome (The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals), Respighi was also interested in early music, and this led to a number of hybrids between musicology and composition, arrangements of Italian Renaissance and Baroque music under the titles Ancient Airs and Dances and The Birds, derived from compositions for lute and harpsichord respectively. The Siciliana is an anonymous dance in a gently lilting pastoral character. It has been effectively and gracefully transcribed by Grandjany.

Siciliana - Respighi

The music was published as Ten Pieces for piano, Opus 12;. No. 7 of these, according to Carlos Salzedo, was “composed for piano or harp." But Salzedo made the present harp arrangement because Prokofiev failed to take into account the fact that a passage written for the piano cannot necessarily be played fluently on the harp. When the error is corrected (involving the order of notes in the repeating right-hand pattern), it is entirely playable on the harp and has been taken up by many players since Salzedo produced his edition.

Prelude in C - Prokofieff

Debussy composed 24 preludes for solo piano; unlike his predecessors Bach and Chopin, he did not systematically use all possible keys, and he thought of them as individual pieces rather than as a set. They were published in two “books” of 12 each. One of the most famous, “The girl with the flaxen hair,” is the eighth prelude in the first book, brief and seemingly simple, but complex in its non-traditional harmony.

La fille aux cheveux de lin - Debussy

Debussy’s first published piano pieces (they appeared in 1888) were two Arabesques, both models of cool elegance in their richly decorated melodies. Both of them have remained favorites, not only of pianists, but of many other instrumentalists, who have transcribed the melodic line for their own instrument over the lower part for the piano. When it is played by the harp, however, no transcription is necessary; the piece can be played from Debussy’s original version.

Premiere Arabesque - Debussy

This early piano work is probably the best-known of all Debussy compositions, a hushed, lyrical interpretation of a shimmering moonlit night. It is part of the Suite Bergamasque, composed about 1890, then revised and published in 1905.

Clair de lune - Debussy

The Sonata in D, despite its numbering, is the only surviving keyboard music to come from the pen of Mateo Albeniz. It is filled with Spanish character in its lively 6/8 tempo, powerful cadences, and the heel-stomping rhythm of the Spanish zapateado. It became a popular work for harpists in a transcription by Nicanor Zabaleta; the arrangement to be heard here is by Susanna Mildonian.

Elizabeth Elgin

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