concert program vi: French Connections

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) August 2 and 3 French Suite no. 5 for Solo Piano, BWV 816 (1722) Allemande Friday, August 2, 8:00 p.m., Stent Family Hall, Menlo School Courante Sarabande Saturday, August 3, 8:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts Gavotte at Menlo-Atherton Bourrée Loure PROGRAM OVERVIEW Gigue Bach is often considered the patriarch of a Germanic tradition, Wu Han, piano a lineage fulfilled by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and CAMILLE SAINT"SAËNS (1835–1921) Brahms. Echoes of his music’s structural rigor are encountered Fantaisie in A Major for Violin and Harp, op. 124 (1907) in the thematic complexity and formal perfection of these later Kristin Lee, violin; Bridget Kibbey, harp Classical and Romantic era composers. But equally vibrant in Bach’s language are the elegance, color, and romance that CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) characterize the music of France more than a century later. The Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915) Pastorale: Lento, dolce rubato bewitching spirit of Bach’s French Suites surfaces in Saint-Saëns’s Interlude: Tempo di minuetto seductive Fantaisie and Debussy’s ethereal Sonata for Flute, Finale: Allegro moderato ma risoluto Viola, and Harp. César Franck’s powerful Piano Quintet presents Ta r a H e l e n O’C o n n o r, flute; Paul Neubauer, viola; Bridget Kibbey, harp PROGRAMSCONCERT a climactic synthesis of French color and German Romanticism. MARCEL TOURNIER (1879–1951) Mingle with the Musicians Suite for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Harp, op. 34 (1928) Saturday, August 3, 10:30 p.m., Stanford Park Hotel’s Menlo Soir Danse Grill (Dutch treat) Lied Visit with the Concert Program VI musicians for dinner or Fête a drink or just to say hello. Please RSVP to 650-330-2141 or Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Kristin Lee, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Dmitri Atapine, cello; Bridget Kibbey, harp [email protected]. INTERMISSION CÉSAR FRANCK (1822–1890) Piano Quintet (1879) SPECIAL THANKS Molto moderato quasi lento Music@Menlo dedicates these performances to the following Lento, con molto sentimento Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco organizations and individuals with gratitude for their generous Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Arnaud Sussmann, Ian Swensen, violins; Richard O’Neill, viola; David Finckel, cello support: August 2: The David B. and Edward C. Goodstein Foundation

August 3: Vivian Sweeney

Jean Béraud (1849–1935). Dinner at les Ambassadeurs, Hôtel de Crillon, Paris, 1880. Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

www.musicatmenlo.org Program Notes: French Connections

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH passed it back to German musicians in that highly decorated form. The (Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, Leipzig) courante was an old court dance accompanied by jumping motions that French Suite no. 5 for Solo Piano, BWV 816 was frequently paired with the smoothly flowing allemande. When the sara- bande immigrated to Spain from its birthplace in Mexico in the sixteenth Composed: 1722 century, it was so wild in its motions and so lascivious in its implications that Brandenburg Concerti, BWV 1046–1051 Other works from this period: Cervantes ridiculed it and Philip II suppressed it. The dance became con- (1721); Fantasia in C Major, BWV 573 (1722); The Well-Tempered Clavier, siderably more tame when it was taken over into French and English music BWV 846–869 (1722); Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1042 (ca. 1723) during the following century, and it had achieved the dignified manner in Approximate duration: 16 minutes which it was known to Bach by 1700. The gavotte is a dance of moderate liveliness whose ancestry traces back to French peasant music. The bour- From 1717 to 1723, Bach was Director of Music at the court of Anhalt- rée was a French folk dance that was adopted by the court as early as the Cöthen, north of Leipzig. He liked his job. His employer, Prince Leopold, sixteenth century. It is joyful and diverting in character and, when danced, was a well-educated man, twenty-four years old at the time he engaged is begun with a brisk leap, which is mirrored in Bach’s quick, upbeat pattern. Bach. (Bach was thirty-two.) Leopold was fond of travel and books and The loure was derived from a seventeenth-century country dance originally paintings, but his real passion was music. (Reports had it that Leopold spent accompanied by rustic instruments. (“Loure” is an obsolete French name for a whopping 20 percent of the court’s annual budget on his musical estab- the bagpipe.) The lively gigue arose from an English folk dance and became lishment.) The prince was an accomplished musician: he not only played popular as the model for instrumental compositions by French, German, violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord well enough to join with the profes- and Italian musicians when it migrated to the Continent. sionals in his household orchestra but he also had an exceptional bass voice. —Dr. Richard E. Rodda He started the court musical establishment in 1707 with three players (his puritanical father had no use for music), and by the time of Bach’s appoint- ment, the ensemble had grown to nearly twenty performers equipped with CAMILLE SAINT"SAËNS a fine set of instruments. It was for these musicians that Bach wrote many of (Born October 9, 1835, Paris; died December 16, 1921, Algiers) his outstanding instrumental works, including the Brandenburg Concerti, the orchestral suites, the violin concerti, and much of his chamber and keyboard Fantaisie in A Major for Violin and Harp, op. 124 music. Leopold appreciated Bach’s genius, and Bach returned the compli- Composed: 1907 ment when he said of his prince, “He loved music, he was well acquainted Published: 1907 with it, he understood it.” Other works from this period: Cello Sonata no. 2 in F Major, op. 123 The first four of the so-called French Suites must have been com- (1905); Ouverture de fête, op. 133 (1910); Triptyque in D Major for Violin posed at Cöthen, since they appear in a manuscript collection of six such and Piano, op. 136 (1912); Six Études for the Left Hand, op. 135 (1912) works dating from 1723, the year Bach left Cöthen for Leipzig. The last two Approximate duration: 13 minutes suites in the 1723 set—now known independently as BWV 818 and BWV 819—had been replaced with the French Suites nos. 5 and 6 by 1725, when James Harding titled the final part of his 1965 study of Saint-Saëns and His the collection, much revised, reached its definitive state. The six French Circle “The Legend” and opened it with the following priceless anecdote: Suites (BWV 812–817) form a pendant to the earlier English Suites, though

CONCERT PROGRAMSCONCERT they are smaller in scale (they eschew the elaborate opening preludes of One day in the 1890s, a devout Breton peasant woman bought the English Suites), more melodic in character, and lighter in texture. The a packet of chocolate. It contained the picture of a saint, one in source of the term “French” in the title is unknown. The heading of the 1725 a series of cards depicting famous people given free with every manuscript was written in French, but so was that for the English Suites, and packet. As the woman’s son was very ill and prayers for his recov- neither one mentioned “French” or “English” in its title. The composer’s first ery had so far gone unanswered, she decided to invoke this saint biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, suggested that the works were “written of whom she had never heard before, vowing that should he cure in the French taste,” but the nineteenth-century Bach scholar Philipp Spitta her son she would always display the holy effigy on her own per- countered that “there is no idea of imitating or carrying out any specially son. Almost immediately her plea was met: the boy returned to French characteristics.” What is certain about the title of the French Suites is health, and ever afterwards she carried reverently attached to her that it was not authentic with Bach and that it provides a convenient means bosom the yellowing likeness of Camille Saint-Saëns. of identifying the pieces. The French Suites follow the standard succession of stylized dances Though Saint-Saëns was never canonized by the Church, he was cer- that compose the Baroque form, established in German practice with the tainly lionized by the musical world. The fiftieth anniversary, in 1896, of his works of Johann Jakob Froberger around 1650: allemande, courante, sara- debut as a virtuoso pianist at age eleven provided the catalyst for a stream bande, gigue. In the French Suites, two to four additional dances of differing of honors, awards, citations, memberships, honorary degrees, and demands character (bourrée, gavotte, menuet, air, loure, polonaise, anglaise) are for personal appearances that continued unabated until the day he died. inserted before the gigue. The Fifth Suite includes a gavotte, bourrée, and Though his health deteriorated gradually during his later years, his tenacity loure. The moderately paced allemande, if its French name is to be trusted, and remarkable energy never flagged. He visited the United States for the originated in Germany in the sixteenth century. French composers found first time in 1906, giving concerts of his music in Philadelphia, Chicago, and it useful for displaying their most elaborate keyboard ornamentations and Washington, D.C., despite being seriously ill with diphtheria. He attended the unveiling of a statue in his honor in Dieppe in 1907 and left enough Music@Menlo 2013 mementos of his life to the town to establish a Musée de Saint-Saëns there. the work of Claude Monet. As applied to the music of Debussy, the term He represented France at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco describes a rich palette of harmonic colors and instrumental timbres, often in 1915, conducting his choral work Hail California, written especially for the treated in ways contrary to the dictates of Classical tradition. The composer occasion. In 1916, he made his first tour of South America; in May 1920, he once said, “Generally speaking, I feel more and more that music, by its very took part as conductor and pianist in a festival of his music in Athens; he essence, is not something that can flow inside a rigorous, traditional form. It gave a solo recital at Dieppe in August 1921 in observance of his eighty-sixth consists of colors and of rhythmicized time.” Musicologist Jann Pasler has birthday; he put in two hours of practice at the keyboard on the morning he described Debussy’s Impressionist language as an “attempt to explore the died, December 16, 1921, in Algiers. Saint-Saëns allowed that he composed fleeting moment and the mystery of life” (emphasis mine). Even during his music as easily, naturally, and inevitably as an apple tree produces fruit, and days as a student at the Paris Conservatory, once when presenting sketches he remained active and creative to the very end of his long life. in a class taught by the composer César Franck, Debussy was challenged by Three times during his later years, Saint-Saëns applied his art of beauty, Franck to modulate to a new key. Debussy replied, “Why should I modulate precision, and formal perfection to music for the harp: the Fantaisie for Solo when I am perfectly happy in the tonality I am in?” Harp (op. 95) of 1893, the Fantaisie for Violin and Harp (op. 124) of 1907, Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp represents one of the and the Morceau de Concert for Harp and Orchestra (op. 154) of 1918. The composer’s last completed works. It was one of a projected set of six sonatas Fantaisie for Violin and Harp was composed early in 1907 at Bordighera, on for various instruments, only three of which Debussy saw to fruition before the Italian Riviera, where Saint-Saëns had gone to rest up after overseeing succumbing to the cancer that had afflicted him for several years. In addi- the first production in thirty years of his opera Le timbre d’argent (The Sil- tion to this work, Debussy also completed the Cello Sonata in 1915 and the ver Bell) in nearby Monte Carlo. He dedicated the score to the harpist Clara Violin Sonata in 1917. Eissler and her sister Marianne, who enjoyed a modest career as a violinist. The sonata’s instrumentation is without precedent in the literature, and (She recorded the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria in 1905 with the celebrated diva Debussy’s management of the ensemble’s range of colors and textures is Adelina Patti, then completing her international round of farewell appear- alchemical. Debussy features each instrument’s distinct timbre, as in the open- ances.) Saint-Saëns eschewed the classical forms that he usually favored for ing measures of the first movement pastorale: a harp arpeggio ushers in a his instrumental works in the fantaisie in favor of a sectional construction: an flute melody, mélancoliquement, and then a high, sustained viola line, doux et introductory passage of an improvisatory nature, an Allegro of a more robust pénétrant. Elsewhere in the episodic first movement, Debussy synthesizes the character that reaches an impassioned climax, a scherzo-like episode with a three instruments with equal aplomb. Shortly following the movement’s enig- contrasting pastoral interlude, an Andante built above a repeating ostinato matic introduction, the tempo quickens and the sonority, though still ethereal figure in the harp, and reminiscences of the first two sections as a coda. and shaded in pastel hues, expands. The viola and harp provide a nuanced —Dr. Richard E. Rodda accompanimental texture as a backdrop to the flute melody. The character of this music is elusive: though it appears to be joyful, the ensemble’s gossamer timbre lends it a wistful air. Such passages bear witness to Debussy’s assessment of the sonata’s character as “terribly mel- CLAUDE DEBUSSY ancholy—should one laugh or cry? Perhaps both at the same time.” (Born August 22, 1862, St. Germain-en-Laye; died March 25, 1918, Paris) In his drive to assert the identity of French music against the grow- Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp ing wave of German influence (especially while Europe was in the throes Composed: 1915 of the First World War), Debussy looked to the music of two of France’s Published: 1916 great Baroque composers, François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Dedication: Emma-Claude Debussy (the composer’s daughter) as models of elegance and textural clarity. “Where is French music?” he asked. “Where are the old harpsichordists who had so much true music? First performance: Detailed in the notes below They had the secret of gracefulness and emotion without epilepsy, which

Other works from this period: La mer (1903–1905); Danse sacrée et PROGRAMSCONCERT we have negated like ungrateful children.” The sonata’s second movement, Danse profane (1904); Images (1909–1912); Première rhapsodie for Clarinet cast in the form of a minuet, strongly evokes the “secret of gracefulness and and Piano (1909–1910); Six épigraphes antiques (1914); Préludes Book 1 and emotion” that Debussy sought in the music of the past. Debussy marks the Book 2 (1910, 1911–1913) melody to be played piano, dolce, semplice—soft, sweet, and simple. A faster Approximate duration: 17 minutes middle section, in 4/4 time and marked Poco più animato—slightly more ani- mated—suggests the Far Eastern influence on French art and culture in the The French composer Claude Debussy is universally recognized as one of early twentieth century. The sonata concludes with an assertive finale. the most influential musical voices of the twentieth century. To the ears of The Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp received its premiere on April many music lovers, his landmark work of 1894, Prelude to “The Afternoon of 21, 1917, by flutist Albert Manouvrier, violist Sigismond Jarecki, and harp- a Faun,” represents the beginning of a new era in music. The composer and ist Pierre Jamet. Debussy’s sonata—one of the earliest major works in the conductor Pierre Boulez wrote that, with this work, “The art of music began harp repertoire and still to this day one of that instrument’s most famous to beat with a new pulse.” In 1971, the eighty-eight-year-old Igor Stravinsky pieces—so enthralled Jamet that he right away established a new chamber surmised, “Debussy is in all senses the century’s first musician.” ensemble, the Quintette Instrumental de Paris, comprising a flutist, violin- Debussy’s unique approach to harmony, rhythm, and orchestration ist, violist, cellist, and himself. The express purpose of this new quintet was was driven as much by a conscious resistance to the prevailing German to expand the chamber music repertoire for harp through further commis- musical language of composer Richard Wagner as it was by the instinc- sions. Among Jamet’s numerous commissions was the Opus 34 Suite for tive desire to express himself in an original way. This approach yielded a Flute, Harp, and Strings by the composer and harpist Marcel Tournier. distinctly French musical voice, as distinguishable by its color and inflection —Patrick Castillo from the German idiom as the actual spoken languages are different. The musical language cultivated by Debussy became known as Impressionism, a term borrowed from the visual arts and, specifically,

www.musicatmenlo.org MARCEL TOURNIER César Franck demonstrated great skill from a young age as a pianist. His father, (Born January 5, 1879, Paris; died May 8, 1951, Paris) who dictated the direction of his studies (and eventually his career), enrolled Suite for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Harp, op. 34 the seven-year-old Franck in the Liège Conservatoire in October of 1830 and later moved the family to Paris, where Franck soon began study at the Paris Composed: 1928 Conservatoire. In 1842, with the intention of exploiting Franck’s talent as a pia- May 21, 1928, in Paris by the Quintette Instrumental de Paris Premiered: nist for financial gain, Franck’s father withdrew him from the Conservatoire to Other works from this period: Detailed in the notes below attempt a grand tour of Belgium. Much to the elder Franck’s disappointment, Approximate duration: 14 minutes the younger Franck’s debut as a concert pianist was poorly received, and his first large-scale composition, the biblical oratorio Ruth, was comparably fruit- Acclaimed French harpist and composer Marcel Tournier, born in Paris on Janu- less. Franck eagerly broke free of his father’s overbearing grasp and moved ary 5, 1879, studied with Alphonse Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatoire, where in with the family of Félicité Desmousseaux, his fiancée, whose parents out- he received the coveted First Prize in Harp in 1899. He subsequently studied wardly despised the engagement. Franck supported himself by teaching and composition with Charles Lenepveu and Georges Caussade and won the Prix supplemented his petty income by playing organ. In 1858, he was appointed de Rome in 1909 for his cantata La Roussalka. That same year he received the organist of the newly constructed Basilica of Saint Clotilde in Paris, where he Rossini Prize from the Institut de France for his “lyric scene in four episodes” gradually matured in his distinction as a composer. In the 1870s, successful for violin and orchestra after the old tale of Laure et Pétrarque. In 1912, Tournier performances of his early chamber trios, written during his time at the Paris succeeded his teacher Hasselmans as Professor of Harp at the Conservatoire, Conservatoire, compelled him to write chamber music again after a thirty- a post he occupied until 1948 while performing widely as a soloist and with the year hiatus, the result being a tremendously creative compositional period orchestras of the Concerts Lamoureux, Société des Concerts, and Paris Opéra. that lasted the nearly twenty years until his death. He died in Paris on May 8, 1951. In addition to writing a treatise on his instrument The Piano Quintet in f minor, written in 1879, was Franck’s first chamber (published posthumously, in 1959), Tournier composed two ballets, songs, piano work of this period. Though it received an overwhelmingly strong reception pieces, and many chamber and solo works for harp. at its Société Nationale premiere on January 17, 1880, the work was a source Pierre Jamet (1893–1991) was a prizewinning graduate and later harp of much controversy, both in Franck’s personal and in his compositional life. In professor at the Paris Conservatoire, Principal Harpist of the Paris Opéra 1876, Franck had begun to teach the vivacious young composer Augusta Hol- and Concerts Colonne, founder of the Association Internationale des mès, who notably won the hearts and passion of such composers as Wagner, Harpistes et des Amis de la Harpe, Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, and d’Indy, and even Camille Saint-Saëns (who was thought to be homosexual). It Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He had already established his has been suggested that the brooding passion that Franck roots into his Piano reputation as a soloist and chamber musician by the time he participated in Quintet was prompted by amorous feelings for Holmès; if true, this concealed the premiere of Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp in April 1917, admiration did not go unnoticed. Félicité, now his wife of twenty-seven years, after which he ardently sought to expand the repertory for his instrument. In refused to attend the debut of the quintet or any performance thereafter. 1922, Jamet founded the Quintette Instrumental de Paris with flutist René Composed at a time when such post-Romantics as Franck’s trusted col- Le Roy, violinist René Bas, violist Pierre Grout, and cellist Roger Boulmé, league Franz Liszt were briskly reshaping the direction of Western music, the and the ensemble quickly gained prominence not only for its exemplary quintet was deemed abominable, even by Liszt himself, who thought the work performances of music by Beethoven, Mozart, Rameau, and other classical exceeded “the legitimate bounds for chamber music.” The Marsick Quartet masters but also for inspiring new works from such prominent contem- and pianist-composer Camille Saint-Saëns, to whom Franck had intended porary composers as Roussel, Françaix, Koechlin, Schmitt, Tailleferre, and to dedicate the piece, premiered the work. Immediately following the per- Jolivet. Tournier composed his Suite for Flute, Harp, and Strings, op. 34, in formance, Saint-Saëns stormed offstage, leaving the baffled Franck behind 1928 for the Quintette, which premiered the work in Paris on May 21, 1928. holding the manuscript with his name affixed as the dedicatee. It is unclear The suite opens with an evocation of Soir (“Evening”) that begins in an whether Saint-Saëns was appalled by the quintet’s frequent modulations and CONCERT PROGRAMSCONCERT appropriately crepuscular mood but turns more animated for its central pas- aesthetic complexity or he was actually motivated by jealousy towards Hol- sage. Had the satyr in Debussy’s Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun” been mès. Nevertheless, despite Saint-Saëns’s misgivings, the work was an instant successful in his pursuit of the nymphs who gamboled across his hillock, the success and quickly became a staple in the French repertoire—so much musical offspring might well have resembled the second movement Danse so that the Société staged a second performance of the work, which was in its bantering character, luscious sonorities, and prominence accorded to unheard of at the time. the flute. Lied (“Song”) provides a languid interlude. The closing Fête (“Fes- The first movement, in sonata form, begins immediately with a stormy tival”) is playful and thoughtful by turns. statement by the string quartet, followed by a thoughtful soliloquy in the —Dr. Richard E. Rodda piano. After some conversation between the two individual voices, the plot thickens and they join together to utter the first Allegro theme. A contrast- ing mysterious second theme, marked tema ma con passione, is introduced, based on the introductory piano response. The work is cast in cyclic form, a CÉSAR FRANCK signature method of composition in which a theme is cast throughout later (Born December 10, 1822, Liège; died November 8, 1890, Paris) movements, which serves to unify the piece as an organic whole. The tema ma Piano Quintet con passione is featured throughout as a haunting reprise of the epic breadth Composed: 1879 in the first movement. The slow movement, Lento, con molto sentimento, con- First performance: January 17, 1880, Société Nationale templatively continues Franck’s modal shifts, with the turbulent scales adding Other works from this period: Prélude, choral et fugue op. 21 (1884); Vio- a hesitant aura to the work. The finale’s second theme presents a rhythmic lin Sonata in A Major, op. 8 (1887); Quartet in D Major, op. 9 (1890) derivation of the Lento and flirts with the tema ma con passione theme until the very end, when the entire work culminates in one grand statement of this Approximate duration: 35 minutes ecstatic and sensuous decree. —Andrew Goldstein

Music@Menlo 2013