Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Concert 1 program notes

François Devienne, Sonata No. 1 in C Major for Clarinet and Piano:  Devienne (1759-1803) was a French contemporary of Mozart.  He was a renowned flutist -- a performer, teacher, scholar and composer of several hundred works for wind instruments.  His clarinet sonatas are works of charm, elegance, melody and virtuosity.  Sonata No. 2, composed sometime in the 1780s, has three movements: I.  Allegro con spirito, II.  Adagio and III.  Rondo, Allegretto.

Maurice Ravel, Pièce en Forme de Habanera: Ravel (1875-1937) was a French Romantic composer of virtuosic piano works, as well as chamber music, orchestral pieces, ballets, operas and vocal works.  Ravel was fascinated by the music of Spain, including the slow, sultry Spanish dance called the habanera.  This short work of 1907 – originally written for bass vocalist and piano, and since adapted for many instruments – has been called a “blindingly difficult virtuoso exercise.” 

Gabriel Pierné, Canzonetta op. 19: Pierne (1863-1937) was a composer, organist and conductor.  He studied composition with Jules Massenet and organ with César Franck, whom he succeeded as organist at St. Clotilde Basilica in Paris in 1890.  Pierné was a master musical craftsman, whether composing weighty organ music or this1888 single-movement work of  what Blair Johnston called “ear candy.”        

Germaine Tailleferre, Arabesque: Tailleferre (1892 -1983) was the only female member of the Montparnasse composers known as Les Six, whose works were seen as a reaction to the musical style of Wagner and the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.  This ornate and decorative work, composed in 1973, was loosely based on an opera about a little mermaid.

Ernest Chausson, Andante et Allegro: Chausson (1855-99) was trained as a lawyer but decided to become a composer after hearing Wagner’s music in Germany.  He was a friend of Debussy and Ysaÿe, and he studied under Massenet and Franck at the Paris Conservatory.  He completed this work in 1881, contrasting the lyricism of the Andante with the pyrotechnics of the Allegro. 

Claude Debussy:  Debussy (1862- 1918) is widely regarded as the finest French composer of his time.  He created a new style of music but, unlike other revolutionaries, did not trigger musical warfare in doing so.

Petite Pièce, L. 120 is a miniature work that Debussy composed in 1910 to be used as a clarinet sight-reading exam at the Paris Conservatory.  It is his shortest chamber music work.

Prèmiere Rhapsodie, L. 116, was composed in 1909-10, as a prepared piece to be performed by clarinet students applying for admission to the Paris Conservatory.  It received a premiere performance in 1911 with full orchestral accompaniment.  Debussy called this Rhapsody “one of the most charming [works] I have ever written.”

Camille Saint-Saëns, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 167:  Saint-Saens (1835-1921) was “probably the most awesome child prodigy in the history of music” [Harold Schonberg].  His friend and mentor Berlioz once said that “He knows everything but he lacks inexperience.”  He was a prolific and versatile composer of symphonies, concertos, chamber works, operas, choral music and solo piano and organ works.  His long life spanned the transition from Romanticism to Modernism.  Saint-Saëns began to work on this sonata in Algeria and finished it in Paris at age 85, shortly before his death.  It is a four-movement staple of the clarinet repertoire:  I.  Allegretto, II.  Allegro animato, III.  Lento and IV.  Molto allegro. 

Louis Cahuzac, Variations sur un air du Pays d’Oc (Variations on a Tune from the South of France):  Cahuzac (1880-1960) was a French composer and clarinetist, one of the first 20^th Century composers to make a career as a soloist.  Cahuzac honored his homeland of Southern France by these four Variations, composed in 1953, which are based on the song Se Canto from the Garonne Valley.

Concert 2 program notes

Maurice Ravel:  Ravel (1875-1937) was a French Romantic composer and a composition student of Gabriel Fauré.  In addition to chamber music, he composed orchestral music (“Bolero” was instantly famous, well before Bo Derek seduced Dudley Moore to that work in the movie “10”).  He also composed ballets, operas and vocal works, as well as a large number of virtuosic pieces for piano.  Ravel was not physically fit for military service in World War I because of his slight height and weight.  Instead, he volunteered as a transport driver at the front near Verdun, where he saw the horrors of war first-hand – experiences that he refused to talk about thereafter.

Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano:  Ravel composed this work between 1923 and 1927, with interruptions due to other work and the ill health that plagued him after World War I.  Ravel believed that the violin and the piano are “two fundamentally incompatible instruments.”  In this sonata, he “assumed the task, far from bringing their differences into equilibrium, of emphasizing their irreconcilability through their independence.”  Movement I,  Allegretto, is “elegant, poised and sensual ... the movement never stops, as if in a continual sweep”  [Midori].  Movement II,  Blues: Moderato, reflects the influence of American music on Ravel.  Ravel acknowledged this ... to an extent:  “To my mind, the 'blues' is one of your greatest musical assets, truly American despite earlier contributory influences from Africa and Spain.  While I adopted this popular form of your music, I venture to say that nevertheless it is French music, Ravel's music, that I have written.”  Movement III,  Perpetuum mobile, Allegro, “tests the limits of the violinist’s virtuosity” [Midori].

Sonata for Violin and Cello:  This four-movement work began in 1920 as a one-movement tribute to Debussy, who had died two years before.  After the premiere of the original composition, Ravel added three more movements over the following two years, dedicating the four-movement sonata to Debussy.  Ravel believed that, in this sonata, “the music is stripped down to the bone.  The allure of harmony is rejected and increasingly there is a return of emphasis on melody.”  The sonata contains echoes of Zoltán Kodály (who had previously written a sonata for the same two instruments), as well as Bartók and Hungarian folk music.  The movements are:  I.  Allegro, II.  Très vif, III.  Lent and IV.  Vif, avec entrain.

Tzigane (“Gypsy”) for Violin and Piano:  Ravel composed this one-movement “concert rhapsody” in 1924, on commission from the great-niece of violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim.  Ravel was fascinated by the exoticism of Hungarian and “gypsy” music.  The violinist Midori describes this work as being divided into a Cadenza and a post-Cadenza.  She considers the Cadenza “a gypsy’s declamatory monologue about his life – his misery, passions, memories, surroundings, and dreams.”  In the post-Cadenza, “we are transported into the countryside where the gypsies live.  We experience the gaiety of their lives in a section that peaks in a festive, frenzied dance in the form of a loose set of variations.”  Although Ravel arranged this work for violin and orchestra soon after its composition, the work is still played more often in its original version for violin and piano.        

Gabriel Fauré, Trio in D Minor for Piano, Violin and Cello, op. 120:  Fauré (1845-1924) was a student of Camille Saint-Saëns and, in turn, was a teacher of Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt and Nadia Boulanger.  In his earlier years, Fauré was recognized more as an organist and teacher than as a composer.  By mid-career, his positions as the organist at the Madeleine Church and the director of the Paris Conservatory still overshadowed his reputation as a composer.  But by the end of his life, he was considered the leading French composer of his day.  There are fewer differences between the early, middle and late works of Fauré than for many composers.  As Aaron Copland put it, “The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound.”  Fauré composed his piano trio at age 78, the year before his death.  The work is in three movements:  I.  Allegro, ma non troppo, II.  Andantino and III.  Allegro vivo. 

Concert 3 program notes

Francis Poulenc, Sonata for Flute and Piano:  Poulenc (1899-1963) was a member of the Les Six group, which stressed lack of pretension, nostalgia and overt sentimentalism in their music.  He believed that the French, like the Germans and the Russians, could “write profound music,” but that French music should be “leavened with that lightness of spirit without which life would be unendurable.”  Poulenc wrote this sonata in 1957.  He and the flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal premiered it at the Strasbourg Music Festival that same year, first in a private performance for Arthur Rubenstein, and the following day in a public performance.  The sonata is in three movements:  I.  Allegretto malinconico, II.  Cantilena: Assez lent and III.  Presto giocoso.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Tarantella for Flute, Clarinet and Piano, op. 6:  Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was “probably the most awesome child prodigy in the history of music” [Harold Schonberg].  His friend and mentor Berlioz once said that “He knows everything but he lacks inexperience.”  He was a prolific and versatile composer of symphonies, concertos, chamber works, operas, choral music and solo piano and organ works.  His long life spanned the transition from Romanticism to Modernism.  A tarantella is a traditional Italian folk dance, characterized by a fast, upbeat tempo.  This Tarantella was an early work by Saint-Saëns, written in 1857 as a virtuosic showpiece for musical skills on the improved flutes and clarinets of his day.  James Leonard has called this work “instantly memorable and thoroughly loveable.”

Edouard Destenay, Trio in B Minor for Clarinet, Oboe and Piano, op. 27:  Destenay (1850-1925) was an Algerian-born career officer in the French Army, distinguished enough to have been an officer of the French Legion of Honor.  He and Saint-Saëns may have been acquainted during the times of his career that Destenay spent in Paris.  The date of its composition is unknown, but the trio was first published in 1906.  It was dedicated to a late-19^th Century oboe teacher at the Paris Conservatory and the clarinet teacher at Lamoureux.  The trio is set in three movements:  I.  Allegro vivace, II.  Andante non troppo and III.  Presto. 

Claude Debussy, Syrinx for Solo Flute, L. 129:  Debussy (1862-1918) is widely regarded as the finest French composer of his time.  He created a new style of music but, unlike other revolutionaries, did not trigger musical warfare in doing so.  Debussy wrote Syrinx for solo flute in 1913, one of the first solo compositions for the modern Böhm flute.  Its name comes from the myth of the amorous pursuit of the nymph Syrinx by the god Pan.  To evade Pan, Syrinx turns herself into a water reed in the marshes.  Pan cuts the reeds to make his pipes and, in doing so, inadvertently kills his love object.  The piece is commonly played from offstage, as it will be at this performance.

Maurice Ravel, Trio in A Minor for Piano, Violin and Cello:  Ravel (1875-1937) was a French Romantic composer of virtuosic piano works, as well as chamber music, orchestral pieces, ballets, operas and vocal works.  Ravel’s trio is a technical masterpiece, requiring a high level of virtuosity by all three instrumentalists.  He composed it in 1914, completing much of the work after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914.  Ravel wrote to a friend that he worked on the trio “with the sureness and lucidity of a madman,” in order to be able to volunteer for the defense of France.  The musical inspiration for the trio came from a variety of sources, including Basque dance, French and Malaysian poetry, and French Impressionist painting.   The trio is in four movements:  I.  Modéré, II.  Pantoum (Assez vif), III.  Passacaille (Très large) and IV.  Final (Animé).  

Concert 4 program notes

The Mae Ruth Swanson Memorial Concert

Hector Berlioz, Les Nuits d’ete (“Summer Nights”), op. 7:  Berlioz (1803-69) was a French Romantic composer, conductor, music critic and scholar.  His compositions included more than 50 songs, more than 40 choral works (including his Requiem), five operas (including his magnum opus, “The Trojans”), and four symphonies (including his Symphonie Fantastique).  His Treatise on Instrumentation and Orchestration was a landmark work of scholarship.  His music influenced Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt, Richard Strauss and Mahler, among others.  He composed Les Nuits d’ete in 1840-41 for voice and piano, based on six poems selected from the volume, La Comédie de la mort (The Comedy of Death), written by his close friend Théophile Gautier in 1838.  The six poems included in the song cycle are:  1.  Villanelle, 2.  Le spectre de la rose, 3.  Sur les lagunes, 4.  Absence,5.  Au cimetière and 6.  L'île inconnue.  “The poems consider love from different angles, but loss of love permeates them all.  When performed as a cycle, the songs convey this loss all the more strongly, not just as individual compositions touched by melancholy, but as a coherent conception” [John Magnum].  “Unlike Berlioz's best-known and most characteristic compositions, these are private, even personal works, and he seemed reluctant to put them in the public spotlight” [Phillip Huscher].  Berlioz orchestrated the fourth song in 1843 and the rest in 1856.  The piano-vocal version may not have been performed in public concert.

Oliver Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (“Quartet for the End of Time”):  Messiaen (1908-92) was a 20^th Century French composer and organist.  He was born in Avignon to a father who was a poet, and a mother who was an English teacher and translator.  When the family moved to Paris, the 11-year-old Oliver entered the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers included Ducas, Widor and Dupré.  At age 23, Messiaen was appointed as the organist for the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, a position he held for more than 60 years.  At the beginning of World War II, Messiaen was drafted into the French army, where he served as a medic because his eyesight was too poor for him to be a combat soldier.  He was captured at Verdun in May 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany.  His fellow prisoners included a violinist, a cellist and a clarinetist.  He composed a trio for them, which he expanded into his “Quartet for the End of Time,” adding a piano to the trio.  The premiere of the Quartet was given at the POW camp in January 1941, outdoors and in the rain, with the composer at the keyboard of a decrepit upright piano.  The deeply religious Messiaen took the title of the Quartet from the Book of Revelation:

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire ... and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth .... And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever ... that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished .... 

The work is in eight movements: 

I. Liturgie de cristal (“Crystal Liturgy”) for the full quartet;
II. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps(“Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time”) for the full quartet;
III. Abîme des oiseaux (“Abyss of birds”) for solo clarinet;
IV. Intermède (“Interlude”) for violin, cello and clarinet;
V. Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus (“Praise to the eternity of Jesus”) for cello and piano;
VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (“Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets”) for the full quartet;
VII. Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (“Tangle of rainbows, for the angel who announces the end of time”) for the full quartet; and
VIII. Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus (“Praise to the immortality of Jesus”) for violin and piano.