Rondeau 'rue du Rocher'

In 1994, during rehearsals for his Violin Concerto in Paris, Goldschmidt dined at a restaurant in the Rue du Rocher with the violinist Chantal Juillet and the conductor Charles Dutoit. To his astonishment, he found himself next door to where he had gone to meet the playwright Fernand Crommelynck nearly sixty years earlier in order to request permission to turn his play ‘Der gewaltige Hahnrei’ into an opera. Encouraged by his dining companions to write a work to celebrate this coincidence, Goldschmidt subsequently composed the Rondeau which ingeniously works the musical notes available in the name ‘Rue du Rocher’ into its musical fabric, as well as witty allusions to his own Violin Concerto. It is a characteristic work of his late style, by turns light-hearted and introspective, playful and poignant.