Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2

(1835-1921) Camille Saint-Saëns 2 Piano Trios nos. 1 & ‘I am working quietly away at a Trio which I hope will drive to despair all those unlucky enough to hear it. I shall need the whole summer to perpetrate this atrocity; one must have a little fun somehow.’ Should we take literally this declaration of intention by Camille Saint-Saëns. Twenty-five years after a Trio no.1 that was already an indisputable success – with its marvellous scherzo, regulated like clockwork – Saint- Saëns showed everything he was capable of in the second: premiered on 7 December 1892, it did not fail to surprise listeners: after all, one must have a little fun somehow! HMA 1951862 ‘People little acquainted with matters musical generally believe that the most import ant events in musical life take place in the opera house, and that instrumental music offers little of interest. In literature, there is the Theatre, but there is also the Book, to which we must always return, whatever the powerful attractions of the stage; in musical literature, concert and chamber music represents the book, with its special importance, its solidity and its durability. It is only in the past few years that the truth of this has begun to be understood in France’ 1. At a period when a French composer could establish a reputation with the public only through the medium of opera, Camille Saint-Saëns was a pion eer in writing chamber music. Along with Lalo, Onslow and Reber, he set an example in a sphere then little explored other than by the German composers who had already cultivated it, with illustrious results, for several generations. The few chamber music societies which propagated this repertoire at the time contented themselves with programming Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn, or ‘sometimes Schumann, to show a touch of daring’ 2. In his desire to defend contemporary French music, of which he was one of the most serious representatives in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale de Musique, with its motto Ars Gallica, on 25 February 1871; his associates in the venture were Jules Massenet, César Franck and Henri Duparc. More than any other such organisation, the Société Nationale contributed to the emancipation of instrumental music, and notably chamber music, in France, thus revealing to the public a substantial output of string quartets, sonatas, and string ensembles with piano, in works by Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Franck, Dubois, Castillon, Duparc, Massenet, Guiraud, Lalo, d’Indy, Widor, Chausson, Gounod, Bizet, Messager, and Chabrier. Over the eighty years of his compositional career, Camille Saint-Saëns wrote some fifty chamber works, from his first sonata for the Belgian violinist Bessems composed at the age of seven to the musical testament of his three sonatas for solo wind instrument and piano of 1921 (for oboe, clarinet and bassoon respectively). Alongside formations derived from German Classical and Romantic tradition (sonata, trio, quartet or quintet with or without piano), Saint-Saëns left several occasional works intended to highlight a particular instrument (violin, flute, horn, trombone, harp, etc.), as well as scores for more out-of-the-way combinations such as those of the Six Duos for harmonium and piano of 1858 or the Septet in E flat major, op.65, of 1879 for trumpet, piano, string quartet and double bass. After a year devoted to orchestral music, which yielded the orchestrated version of the Suite for violin, cello and piano op.16 of 1862 and two new works, the Spartacus Overture and the incomparable Introduction and Rondo capriccioso with solo violin op.28, Saint-Saëns returned to chamber music in 1864 with his Piano Trio no.1 in F major, op.18. Now somewhat neglected 3, though it has been more frequently revived in the past few years, this work, which is striking for its clarity, its youthful- sounding themes and the eminently natural style of a young composer of thirty-two, was abundantly celebrated in its time. Not only was it regularly performed by Saint-Saëns himself, and subsequently by the famous Pugno-Ysaÿe-Hollmann and Cortot-Thibaud-Casals trios; it was chosen to represent the composer at two ceremonies of particular moment, the inauguration of a statue of him at Dieppe, in his presence, on 27 October 1907, and the commemorative concert of 7 January 1922 shortly after his death. Ravel, when he was writing his Piano Trio in A minor (1915), commended the older composer’s op.18, expressing his admiration for its breadth of conception, formal perfection and balanced sonorities. 1 This Piano Trio no.1, the earliest significant chamber music by Saint-Saëns, coming after two youthful works – a Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet in A minor, op.14, of 1853 – immediately established itself as an undisputable success, following directly on from the trios of Schumann and Mendelssohn. The opening Allegro vivace (F major, 3/4 time) begins with the springy syncopations of its first subject, initially presented on the cello. This dance-like theme with ever-changing harmonies, which also generates the secondary motifs, gives the whole movement an astonishing volubility, reinforced by the brilliant piano part. Its almost orchestral richness and the vitality of its sparkling F major is then answered, in a languorous A minor, by a haunting melody from central France, a memento of Saint- Saëns’s recent travels in Auvergne. This folk theme with its typical drone, three times stated in the rhapsodic Andante (A minor, 4/4), offers a rustic contrast with the expansive lyricism of the two interludes in E major. The Scherzo (Presto, in F major and 3/4), regulated like clockwork (as the musicologist Yves Gérard has observed) with its play on syncopated motifs, returns to a livelier tone, which is maintained in the light, cantabile themes of the concluding Allegro (F major, 2/4). It is probably in this fourth and last movement that the balance between the three instruments, in non-stop dialogue between strings and piano, achieves its most perfect expression. Dedicated to Alfred Lamarche, a tax-collector resident in Paris who was to be Saint-Saëns’s best man at his wedding in 1875, the Piano Trio no.1 was given its first performance on 29 December 1867, by the trio of Bosewitz, Telesinsky and Norblin. Almost thirty years later, in June 1892, Saint-Saëns wrote to his friend Charles Lecocq: ‘I am working quietly away at a Trio which I hope will drive to despair all those unlucky enough to hear it. I shall need the whole summer to perpetrate this atrocity; one must have a little fun somehow.’ Acutely aware of the imposing and unusual structure of this work comprising no fewer than five movements, the composer knew that a score so complex and varied in its compositional styles would disconcert listeners. Was he not to write five years later, speaking of his String Quartet no.1 in E minor, op.112: ‘One has the right to compose things that will be understood before their twentieth hearing!’ (letter of 4 April 1899)? Premiered on 7 December 1892 by Isidore Philipp, Berthelier and Loeb, the Piano Trio no.2 in E minor, op.92, is dedicated to one of Saint-Saëns’s pupils, Anna Hoskier, Vicomtesse de Guitaut. It adds to its agogic construction in the form of an arch (from fast to moderate and back again) a subtle interlocking of the different movements: the two outer allegros 4, one in sonata form, the other bolstered by a fugue, frame three more relaxed movements, an audacious compromise between scherzo and slow movement. At the centre of the work lies an introspective Andante (A flat major, 4/4) in which the three instruments constantly pass from one to the other a long threnody of depressive profile, marked to be played appassionato. On either side of this, two dance-like movements offer contrast through their carefree character and bright keys. The first (Allegretto, E major, 5/8) plays on oppositions of character: its skipping initial theme alternates with more sombre episodes, marked by intense lyricism on the strings and dense, almost concertante writing for the piano which recalls that of the first movement, ‘black with notes and black in mood’ as Saint-Saëns put it. The second, Gracioso, poco allegro (G major, 3/8), may well recall a waltz in the style of Chopin, into which Saint- Saëns had been initiated by the celebrated singer Pauline Viardot. This poetic intermezzo with its delightful touches of urbanity was compared by Charles Lecocq to ‘the child of the house who pops his pink snub nose round the door. One would like to send him packing, but he is so charming that one ends up listening and patting him on the head’ (letter of 9 January 1893). EurydicE JoussE Translation: Charles Johnston 1. From ‘Une sonate’, an article by Saint-Saëns published in the Journal de musique no.45 dated 7 April 1877, on the occasion of the public performance of his former pupil Gabriel Fauré’s Violin Sonata in A major op.13. 2. Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘La société nationale de musique’, in Harmonie et mélodie (9th edn., Paris: 1923). 3. In 1985, the German musicologist Ekkehart Kroher observed that ‘the neglect of such a masterpiece is certainly no credit to our times’. 4. Allegro non troppo (E minor, 12/8) and Allegro (E minor, 4/4). 2.

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