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 Manuel de Falla’s “Interlude and Dance”  is the principal purely orchestral episode extracted from the second act of La vida breve. It is presented as a single orchestral scena that moves from a secco, poetic interlude into a short, rhythmically driven Spanish dance; typical concert performances run about seven to eight minutes. The orchestration calls for a large orchestra: pairs of woodwinds with piccolo and English-horn doublings and auxiliary clarinet/bass-clarinet, expanded brass (including four horns, trumpets and trombones and tuba), timpani and assorted percussion (castanets/tambourine among them), two harps and celesta, and full strings—Falla’s scoring emphasizes bright percussion and clear wind color to project the Iberian rhythms.

Musically the piece typifies Falla’s Andalusian language: the Interlude sets a tense, evocative atmosphere through modal sonorities and sustained orchestral sonorities, while the Dance launches a short, ostinato-driven, folkloric episode that propelled the melody into popular circulation (notably via Fritz Kreisler’s violin arrangement). The music’s compact form, clear rhythmic profile and percussive textures make it a frequent concert extract and recording favorite.