Defying Expectations

Despite the piece’s name, Milhaud’s Le boeuf is not about a cow on a roof – it’s the music written for Jean Cocteau’s farcical pantomime about a non-existent speakeasy in America during Prohibition, performed for the first time in Paris in 1919. Milhaud’s score is kaleidoscopic in color, with multiple keys and tonalities jostling with each other for supremacy – and it’s just plain fun, featuring incredibly virtuosic passages for the entire orches...