Les Oiseaux

Chausson wrote some interludes for flute and harp for a production of Aristophanes’ The Birds, performed at Le Petit Thé tre de la Galerie Vivienne, Paris, in 1889. At the request of Emily Beynon, working from the originalmanuscript, which is held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, John McCabe has made a single concert piece using some of this incidental music, a kind of continuous suite rather than a single movement.

The first performance ofthis realisation was given on 21st January 2005 at Tunstall Parish Church, Sittingbourne, Kent at a concert of the Sittingbourne Music Society the artists were Emily Beynon (flute) and Catherine Beynon (harp).