Elisabeth LEONSKAJA Paris Paris MAURICE RAVEL (1875 - 1937) 1-8 • Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911) 16'09 GEORGE ENESCU (1881 - 1955) Piano Sonata op.24, no.1 in F-sharp minor (1924) 26'52 9 • I. Allegro molto moderato e grave 13'20 10 • II. Presto vivace 04'44 11 • III. Andante molto espressivo 08'48 CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862 - 1918) From Préludes pour piano (1910 - 1913) 12 • ... Le vent dans la plaine (Book I) 02'28 13 • ... La fille aux cheveux de lin (Book I) 02'14 14 • ... Feux d'artifice (Book II) 04'37 15 • La Plus que Lente, valse (1910) 05'20 Elisabeth Leonskaja, piano Total Time: 57'40 aris P ENGLISH rom the early 1800s to the end of the 1960s, Paris was the focal city of the arts Fworld par excellence. La Ville Lumière was the city of intellectualism, a place which drew writers, artists and musicians from all over France and overseas. Paris, where every topic became a theme for discussion, and every discussion a reason to form a group, was the nursery from which every tendency and movement was to bud during the following 150 years. But as always, there were traditionalists who opposed this modern turn, and in a country whose culture was innately non- conformist the stage was set for debate. In the eighteenth century, the French were divided over whether music should follow French tastes or be inclined to the Italian. Then came the Romantics and the Wagnerians, Parnassianism, Naturalism, the Symbolists and the Impressionists, and all the diverse stylistic movements that fell into the melting pot of Expressionism. France was awash with influences, and composers of the time were hugely affected in a way never before seen in history: by inspiration from literature, visual arts and philosophy. In the wave of such literary and artistic tumult, and especially between 1887 and 1892, Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918) toyed with Wagnerism – inclining towards Parsifal – and at the same time with the English Pre-Raphaelites, the Russians (the Mighty Five) and symbolist writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. It’s no surprise that a young Debussy was influenced by these tendencies as they were gathering force throughout the artistic scene of Paris. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that Debussy’s music for piano (or any of his music) is impressionist by 3 nature, and lacking in form or substance. In fact, impressionist is a misleading and somewhat disorientating term that has often been wrongly used to describe his music. The composer himself scorned artists who attempted to portray objects not as they really are but as they appear, as they tried to capture merely ephemeral aspects ENGLISH of nature that change from one moment to the next and depend on variations in light and environment. Debussy’s aim was quite the contrary: to penetrate the heart of things in a search for an exact equivalent that embodies the eternal and unyielding essence of an object or an emotion. His own admission, “I sometimes require weeks to decide upon one chord in preference to another”, makes it clear that his method was not that of an artist whose aim is to create an effect or an impression of a thing. The music of Debussy is in no way vague or hazy. Every element has a purpose. In fact, the artistic trend with which he was most strongly affiliated was Symbolism. Stéphane Mallarmé was the founder and spiritual leader of the symbolist movement, gathering around him the writers Henri de Régnier, Jules Laforgue, Pierre Louÿs and Paul Verlaine, as well as the artists Odilon Redon and James McNeill Whistler. All these men and Debussy met weekly at the house of Mallarmé, for his famous Tuesday salons dubbed les mardis de la rue de Rome, and there can be no doubt that the friendships he made within this distinguished circle made a profound impact on his artistic development. A similarly relevant figure of the group was Édouard Dujardin, a poet and writer who made his Revue Indépendante the mouthpiece of the symbolist movement. Frequent meetings of the Parisian elite of the literature and art world took place in the Librairie de l’Art Indépendant bookshop on Chaussée d’Antin, and it was here that Debussy first met the artists whose imagery he so admired, and the writers to whose poems he put music with his incomparable magic. What 4 is remarkable is that this group of eminent figures included not one composer. As ENGLISH Paul Dukas, who was a close friend of Debussy during this time and who shared with Ernest Chausson the honour of being one of his few musical friends, said, the composer was much more strongly influenced by the writers of his time thanthe musicians. The Paris of the Belle Époque pulsated with this energy, animated by cafés that spread their awnings over small round tables set out on the pavement, which were crammed with workers, artists and their models, salesmen, and even the occasional bourgeois family - children and nannies in tow. And the heart of all this fervent activity was the district of Montmartre, the Parisian focus of artistic creativity at the end of the nineteenth century. It was this district where Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937) grew up; these streets where Cézanne, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro and Manet all had their studios; where a year before Ravel’s birth these same painters organised an exhibition entitled Impressionnistes, after Monet’s painting Impression, soleil levant, thus launching the name of the artistic movement into the atmosphere. Perhaps his provenance from such a place was the reason the composer claimed he was a natural child of art and fate. Ravel, who came from the collective of young French musicians who wanted to detoxify Paris of all Wagnerian influence, deeply admired Emmanuel Chabrier, whom he said had stimulated in his adolescent self the same beautiful emotions that Manet roused in him: gazing on Olympia he could find all the melancholy of Chabrier transferred and expressed in a different form. Of the musicians that influenced the young Ravel, Chabrier must be included asa composer, Gabriel Fauré as a teacher, Erik Satie, more as a friend than a composer, 5 and the pianist Ricardo Viñes, as his best friend. But like Debussy, Ravel was part of an intellectual circle, made up of composer Florent Schmitt, writer Léon-Paul Fargue, designer Émile A. Séguy, poet Tristan Klingsor, pianist Ricardo Viñes, music critics Dimitri Calvocoressi and Émile Vuillermoz, orchestral conductor ENGLISH Inghelbrecht, and Maurice Delage, who became his first pupil. All these artists shared tastes in painting, literature and music, and specifically, Ravel shared with the group his passion for Chinese art and his enthusiasm for Mallarmé and Verlaine (two of Debussy’s friends), Cézanne and Van Gogh; his love of Chopin and Couperin, Whistler and Valéry; and his admiration for the Russians and for Debussy. But in the fashion of his contemporaries, his influences were not the musicians in his circle of friends, but Paul Sorde, a man with unwavering enthusiasm, an inspired dreamer and a sensualist; and Léon-Paul Fargue, to whom Ravel owed a great debt for his literary guidance. Fargue was Ravel’s mentor in taste, and he deserves to be remembered for his eccentricities, which infected many artists during a period of history when extravagance in costume and behaviour was considered an integral part of non-conventional thinking: to be misunderstood had become the lot of every genius. Indeed, Ravel pursued his career with gravity and reflection, and a certain feeling of discontent, perhaps even affliction, that he bore with him from adolescence, and which was not something cultivated under the influences of the time. According to Viñes, Ravel liked to appear mysterious and misunderstood, seeing himself as much a work in progress as his compositions. Romanian composer, violinist and pianist George Enescu (1881 – 1955) cannot be left out as the completing factor in this musical trinomial. Of the three composers 6 presented in this programme, Enescu is the only one not of French origin, but Paris ENGLISH imbibed such nourishment from foreign artists that without him, the city would be left as an orphan. Enescu arrived at the Conservatoire de Paris from Vienna in 1895, with a reputable career as a violinist already established at just fourteen years old. His extraordinary talent brought him to the city, but the main attraction for him was Massenet, who was a professor of composition at the Conservatoire. The “modern” style of his first Parisian compositions, as Massenet referred to it, came from the influence of Brahms and Wagner that was still prevalent in his approach to harmony. Although it may be difficult to imagine, Brahms was little known in Paris, with suspicion facing his music born from the contemporary dispute and the resulting division of French musicians. However, Wagner’s music became more popular (the Wagner cult gained favour originally in France from its divulgation by writers and poets), and the list of composers who attended the Bayreuth Festival includes many significant names, including Debussy and Chabrier. One example of Wagner’s influence on Enescu can be appreciated in the slow movement ofhis First Symphony, where the great impact of Tristan on Enescu’s composition is evident. In 1896, Massenet left his post as professor of composition and was replaced by Fauré, for a class whose pupils included Florent Schmitt, Louis Aubert, Paul Ladmirault, Roger-Ducasse and Maurice Ravel. During his time under the instruction of Massenet and Fauré, Enescu also studied counterpoint with another influential professor, André Gédalge, and in 1937, in a critique of the interpretation of Enescu’s Second Orchestral Suite, Florent Schmitt described the counterbalance effect of Gédalge’s teaching: “A pupil of Fauré and Gédale, he owes to the former his elegant 7 melodic lines, subtle harmonies and unexpected modulations, and to the latter the solidity of his construction, the wonderful free-standing quality of his writing […].” Gédalge instilled in Enescu the most important doctrine: that music is, in essence, a matter of musical lines; of expressive declarations that may be developed, contrasted ENGLISH and superimposed.