Matinées musicales, BTC 895

This is a suite, which consists in part of previously written music. Britten wrote a score for Lotte Reininger's 1938 film The Tocher, but could not use everything in the five minutes the film lasts. The Soirées musicales was first drawn from the original film score and about five years later the Matinées musicales followed. There is certainly a difference; the Soirées were first written as a suite for orchestra, the Matinées directly as ballet. Lincoln Kirstein had contracted George Balanchine and sought to produce an extension to the Soirées for a South American tour of the American Ballet.