Ibert – Entr’acte

I have a little gift to offer to my fellow harpists.

Just this past weekend, I played a concert with violinist Merel Vercammen at a delightful little church up in Limmen, north of Amsterdam. Included on our program was the extremely popular Entr’acte by Jacques Ibert. It is so popular that any harpist who has ever played with either flute or violin has most likely heard of this piece. Moreover, anyone who has ever played it has most likely been working from the Alphonse Leduc publication with the bright yellow cover. At least, this was the case for me.

I have been playing this fiery little piece on and off since I was in high school, the whole time fighting to get the page turns by either memorizing sections or turning as quickly as I could. It was only this time that I was suddenly hit with a new stroke of inspiration. Why not rewrite the harp part so that all the repeated sections are condensed?

Sure enough, when I did this, it fit easily onto just two pages! Now I can see the whole piece at a glance, and there are no more page turns at all. It turned out to be so useful, that I decided to share it here:

Ibert-Entr’acte PDF

Disclaimer: to save space, I left out the flute/violin part, so make sure you already have it in your ear if you’re going to use this reduced edition.