Farrenc & Saint-Saëns
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Louise Camille FARRENC & SAINT-SAËNS Romantic Dreams Quintets for Piano and Strings IRONWOOD This album presents two captivating piano quintets from the French Romantic era in historically inspired interpretations by Ironwood. The first is the relatively unknown Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 30, composed in 1839 by Louise Farrenc, the second is the well-known and popular Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 14, composed in 1855 by Camille Saint-Saëns. LOUISE FARRENC 1804–1875 Farrenc, a native of Paris, is remarkable for having forged an unusually prominent career for a female in those days. Farrenc was celebrated as a concert pianist, composer and Quintet for piano and strings No. 1 in A minor, Op. 30 [31’10] 1 I. Allegro 12’50 teacher. She studied the piano in her youth with Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) and Johann 2 II. Adagio non troppo 6’18 Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), both of whom were admired pianists – Moscheles had a 3 III. Scherzo (Presto) 3’54 strong connection with Beethoven, and Hummel with W.A. Mozart – and wrote influential 4 IV. Finale (Allegro) 8’08 pedagogical treatises on piano playing. Farrenc studied composition with Anton Reicha (1770–1836). In 1842 she became the first female professor to be appointed at the Paris Rachael Beesley violin Conservatoire, where she taught piano for thirty years and was successful in fighting for Simon Oswell viola pay equal to her male colleagues. Her early compositional output consisted mainly of Daniel Yeadon cello pieces for solo piano, but by the 1840s she had made significant forays into chamber and Robert Nairn double bass orchestral writing. Farrenc’s two piano quintets constitute some of her finest chamber Neal Peres Da Costa piano music, displaying a mature compositional craft. Saint-Saëns enjoyed a very long career as a virtuoso organist and pianist, prodigious CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS 1835–1921 composer, teacher, and music editor. He was compared in early years with the likes of Mozart and Mendelssohn – making his debut as a pianist at the age of 10. In the height Quintet for piano and strings in A minor, Op. 14 [32’25] of his career he was even said to rival Liszt. Saint-Saëns studied piano at the Paris 5 I. Allegro moderato e maestoso 11’22 Conservatoire and was instructed in the famous method developed by the German-born 6 II. Andante sostenuto 6’25 Paris Conservatoire-trained pianist/composer Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785–1849). This 7 III. Presto 5’40 method had been adopted by Saint-Saëns’ teacher Camille-Marie Stamaty (1811–1870), 8 IV. Allegro assai, ma tranquillo 8’59 himself a star pupil of Kalkbrenner and staunch advocate of the method. For many, the Robin Wilson violin 1 Kalkbrenner Method unlocked new levels of technical brilliance achieved with minimal Rachael Beesley violin 2 movements of the body. Simon Oswell viola After a lengthy stint as church organist, Saint-Saëns embarked upon a freelance career Daniel Yeadon cello which brought him much fame on both sides of the Atlantic. He is remembered today Neal Peres Da Costa piano for many memorable compositions, not least his Third Symphony (‘Organ’) and Carnival of the Animals. Though traditional in many respects in his compositions, he was a progressive and foreshadowed elements of composers in the French group known as Les Six and even Stravinsky. The Op. 14 Piano Quintet was dedicated to his grand-aunt Charlotte Gayard Masson, who resided with him and his mother and gave him his first piano lessons. In early to mid 19th-century Paris, chamber concerts tended to be dominated by works of Austro-German composers, notably Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Farrenc and Saint-Saëns were both active in introducing the public to new and distinctive French — 2 — compositional styles. Often their own chamber works were aired in their own homes is justifiable as, during the first half of the 19th century, there was close interaction and before being presented in the grand Parisian public venues such as the Salle Érard and connection between French, German and Austrian musicians. Nevertheless, we have also the Salle Pleyel. The piano quintets on this recording provide contrasting glimpses of the explored practices that were more typically French and therefore directly applicable to rapidly changing Parisian tastes and of the development of new and experimental string French repertoire of the period. textures and virtuoso piano writing. During the first half of the 19th century, instrumental and vocal performance in France and Farrenc’s Quintet exploits the same sound world as Schubert’s Trout Quintet, with double Belgium steadily became standardised, largely as a result of the benchmarks developed bass instead of a second violin. Classical in style and form but dressed up with Romantic at the Paris Conservatoire (established 1795) and Brussels Conservatoire (established trimmings, the work sounds like Mozart on steroids, particularly in its passionately in 1813). In string playing, Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824) is seen as the father of energetic outer movements, which are tinged with the eloquence of Mendelssohn and the Franco-Belgian school, with founding members including Pierre Rode (1774–1839), the brooding darkness of Chopin. The second movement contrasts hazy ambience in its Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766–1831), and Pierre Baillot (1771–1842). A tradition was handed opening with Schubertian-like drama in its middle section, while the third movement is down through the 19th century incorporating a new bowing style and an expansion of reminiscent of Beethoven in its exuberant energy and wit. the range of special bowings. There was a movement away from the naturally articulated stroke of the Baroque bow towards a more legato style achieved with the newer Tourte With Saint-Saëns’ Quintet, we are taken into a vastly different world. The first movement bow (Walls, 2003). This style was recalled by violinist Carl Flesch (1873–1944), a later juxtaposes several effects: organ-like chords, ghostly string lines, symphonic refrains proponent of the Franco-Belgian School, in his memoirs (Flesch, 1979). By the mid 19th and impressionistic arabesques disguising the underlying sonata-form structure. The century, the aesthetic values and expressive practices of the Franco-Belgian school movement cleverly explores permutations of the initial thematic material. The second were documented in detail in treatises such as Charles-Auguste de Bériot’s (1802–1870) movement harks back to the elegance of a Baroque minuet but with moments of great Méthode de violon (Paris, 1858), including lengthy instructions about bowing style, vibrato, Romantic lyricism. The suave arabesques towards the movement’s end are cleverly portamento (of varying types and intensities), rhythmic and tempo modification, and transformed into the central theme of the third movement, itself a danse macabre filled particularly vocality in performance: syllabification, prosody, and accentuation. And with witches, goblins and other scary creatures reminiscent of Berlioz’ Symphonie there were parallel texts in piano playing and singing, including Sigismond Thalberg’s fantastique. The fourth movement begins with an austere organ-like fugue in the strings, (1812–1871) L’Art du chant appliqué au piano, Op. 79 (Paris, 1853) and Manuel García’s but soon gives way to a rousing heart-on-sleeve anthem (some might be reminded of (1805–1906) École de García: Traité complet de l’art du chant (Paris, 1840 and 1847), the American rock band Blondie), leading to a parody-like sequence of French cabaret as well as Laure Cinti-Damoreau’s (1801–1863) Méthode de chant, composée pour ses music (popular from the 1840s) and the glittering effects that were later associated with classes du Conservatoire (Paris, 1849). Hollywood. Before the brilliant finale, Saint-Saëns reminds us of where the work started, reintroducing the themes of the first movement. The information in such treatises is greatly amplified by evidence in early sound recordings. From 1900 onwards, the art of several of the most important Franco- Exploring HIP in 19th-century French music Belgian instrumentalists and vocalists was captured on acoustic, electrical and piano For this project, Daniel Yeadon and Neal Peres Da Costa have led Ironwood in developing roll recordings. These recordings preserve uniquely Franco-Belgian performance styles, novel interpretations of these two delightful piano quintets, drawing on 19th-century showing how expressive practices actually sounded, their quality and frequency, and performing practices described in contemporary French written sources and preserved on providing models for emulation. Together, these forms of evidence demonstrate clearly early recordings of Franco-Belgian musicians. The project builds on Ironwood’s previous that mid-19th-century Franco-Belgian style was substantially different to today’s modern practice-led creative research, examining the expressive practices of 19th-century Austrian mainstream classical style, which developed during the first half of the 20th century and German string players and pianists, culminating in its acclaimed ABC Classics (Phillip, 1992); this has given us the impetus to reconsider and reevaluate how we recording of Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet and F minor Piano Quintet – Brahms: approach the performance of music of mid-19th-century French composers such as Tones of Romantic Extravagance (2016). Ironwood’s interpretations on the present Farrenc and Saint-Saëns. In essence our interpretative approach in the two piano quintets recording