Symphonic Strings - Rescheduled | Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

French composer Maurice Ravel grew up in an artistic home. His Swiss father and Basque mother encouraged his musical talent, and at the age of 14 he entered the Paris Conservatory. While there he composed some of his most celebrated works, including his Pavane for a Dead Princess and his string quartet, but he seems to have spent most of his time butting heads with the establishment. His works were more personal, exhibiting a strong individuality that unsettled the conservatory elite, who deemed them “too advanced.” His failure to win the coveted Prix de Rome for Composition after three attempts, notwithstanding the quality and maturity of his work, became highly controversial. Less conservative musicians and writers strongly supported Ravel with published protests. In the fallout, the director of the conservatory was ultimately forced to resign. His replacement was Gabriel Faure, who had taught composition to Ravel.

The four-movement Sonata for Violin and Cello was composed between 1920 and 1922 and was dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who had died in 1918. Described as “lean” and “linear,” the sonata stood in sharp contrast to the lush harmonies and textures of his earlier works and was, Ravel later wrote, “stripped to the bone; harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody.” The sonata would mark a turning point; after Debussy’s death, Ravel was widely considered the leading French composer of the era.

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956), Interlude for Oboe and String Quartet

British composer Gerald Finzi is considered one of the most “English” composers of his time. His father died before the boy’s eighth birthday, and he lost all three of his brothers at an early age. His beloved music teacher, Ernest Farrar, who described Finzi as “shy but full of poetry,” would die at the Western Front in WWI. He sought solace in poetry as he continued his studies and soon began setting verse to music, much of which was elegiac in tone. In 1925 he was introduced to Gustav Holst, Arthur Bliss and Ralph Vaughn Williams, who obtained a teaching post for him at the Royal Academy of Music. He married, moved to the country and devoted himself to composition, reading poetry and growing apples. He founded an amateur chamber orchestra, which he conducted until his death at age 55 from complications of Hodgkin’s disease.

Finzi’s personal and introspective Interlude for Oboe and String Quartet was written between 1932 and 1936 and, along with his clarinet concerto, is one of his best-known instrumental compositions. While Finzi is known primarily as a vocal composer, this one-movement work is considered a major piece in the literature for oboe by a British composer. Despite its brevity the Interlude, which may have been intended as part of a concerto, is an expansive, passionate piece with wide-ranging moods in a flowing polyphonic style. It is written in the “English pastoralist” style, and elements of English folk music are woven into its melodic lines.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), Sextet in D minor “Souvenir de Florence,” Op. 70

Tchaikovsky was the son of an affluent lieutenant colonel. He began piano lessons at age five and soon began composing simple pieces. Though supportive of the boy’s musical studies, his father expected him to pursue a career as a public servant. Pyotr was packed off to school to study jurisprudence, as few opportunities existed for musicians in Russia at the time. He served three years at the Ministry of Justice, but when the Saint Petersburg Conservatory opened in 1862, Tchaikovsky eagerly enrolled in its first class. He graduated in 1865 and accepted the post of Professor of Music at the new Moscow Conservatory. His compositions, though decidedly Russian in tone, gradually found acceptance in the West, though they were not considered Russian enough for the Russians. Thanks to the writings of Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky’s music was reassessed in his homeland. Even as his popularity was growing at home and abroad, he died suddenly at the age of 53. His death has been attributed to cholera and even to suicide. The cause may never be known.

Tchaikovsky’s four-movement “Souvenir de Florence,” is a romantic symphony reduced to a sextet. He wrote in a letter, “I am, in essence, composing for the orchestra and only then arranging it for six string instruments,” a task he described as “unimaginably difficult.” The work is so titled because one of the principal themes was sketched while the composer was visiting Florence, Italy, but it is distinctly Russian. The result is a small-ensemble work with the grandeur of a Tchaikovsky symphony and the grace of his ever-popular “Serenade for Strings.”

Program notes by Sara Grossman