It was the end of the 19th century in Europe. The Franco-Prussian war had ended, and World War I had not yet begun. Japan was open to the West. Van Gogh, Victor Hugo, Ravel, Marie Curie walked the streets of Paris. Ideas mingled with a new kind of fluidity.

And France, it could be argued, was the breathless center of it all, a verdant petri dish of newness.

The Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s “We’ll Always Have Paris” celebrates, on Saturday and Sunday, that time in the music of French composers, including Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Chausson.

“It’s a different sound world than, say, the Germans’,” says conductor Lawrence Leighton Smith, “or anything else. … French music is lighter.”

Ask Smith about it, and he ticks off the composers as if they were friends of very good friends.

Chausson, he says, was a great composer. And a slob (“which is amazing when you think of his music”), and a great friend of Claude Debussy, another hitmaker of the age.

Everyone, Smith says, knew each other then.

“(Chausson) died at 44. He rode his bicycle into a wall and that was that,” Smith says cheerily of the composer of “Poème,” a delicate chocolate piece to be performed. “It’s tragic because there was so much music left in him.”

Maurice Ravel, he says, was the dandy and often confused with Debussy.

“Ravel was a pointillist. He wrote very slowly. It was a miracle if he wrote more than four bars of music a day. Debussy had five kids and lived a rather mundane life.”

Both the Ravel works performed — Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and La Valse — toy with the waltz. Smith paired them because the latter feels a bit like a finale to the former.

Other orchestras have “tried it, and so I just stole the idea,” he says.

Although hardly a household name for most people, Paul Dukas created the best-known piece on the program: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a piece he describes as nearly perfect. You probably know the work from Mickey Mouse’s frantic machinations in Disney’s “Fantasia.” Surprisingly, it was based on a rather dark poem written in 1797 by Goethe.

Smith hums a passage (“dee ee dum badaa dump”), and then describes the apprentice’s panic as he tries to tame the magic he’s unleashed. “It’s so graphic even an idiot can follow what’s going on. It’s an amazing piece.”

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Contact the writer: 476-1602 or tracy.mobleymartinez@gazette.com.

“WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS”

What: The Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s tribute to French composers, with violinist Michael Hanson

When: 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave.

Tickets: $14 to $54; 520-7469, 1-866-464-2626, ticketswest.com, TicketsWest outlets

The repertoire

• Dukas: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

• Chausson: Poème

• Saint-Saëns: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso

• Fauré: Pavane

• Ravel: Valses Nobles et Sentimentales

• Ravel: La Valse

LAWRENCE LEIGHTON SMITH Photo by