Ravel & Saint-Saëns Piano Trios Fidelio Trio RES10173 Ravel & Saint-Saëns Piano Trios Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92 1. Allegro non troppo [10:44] Fidelio Trio 2. Allegretto [6:12] 3. Andante con moto [4:15] 4. Grazioso, poco allegro [4:42] Darragh Morgan violin 5. Allegro [8:05] Adi Tal ‘cello Mary Dullea piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Piano Trio 6. Modéré [9:13] 7. Pantoum [4:27] 8. Passacaille [7:01] 9. Final [5:09] Total playing time [59:58] About the Fidelio Trio: ‘Ravel’s Piano Trio was a lyric upwelling […] the Fidelio players brought it off superbly, and it was a joy’ The Sunday Times ‘The sound of this trio is irresistible’ The Herald Ravel & Saint-Saëns: Piano Trios March 1908 he included it in a wishlist of works he would like to compose which he Ravel’s chamber music is a particularly rich sent in a letter to his friend Cipa Godebski. creative field, though there are relatively Six years later the idea still attracted him, few large-scale works. Excluding an early and the trio was written in March–April violin sonata published long after Ravel’s and July–August 1914, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, death, the earliest is also the best-known: in the Basque area of Labourd (now part of the String Quartet, completed in 1903 and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Department), just dedicated to his teacher, Fauré. Two years across the river Nivelle from his birthplace later, in 1905, Erard’s new design of harp of Ciboure. The location was important: in was the impetus for Ravel to compose his 1928 autobiography, Ravel stressed that the Introduction et Allegro for harp, flute, the work was ‘Basque in colouring’. The clarinet and string quartet. Other works Trio is dedicated to his teacher André were to follow after World War One, Gedalge (1856–1926), with whom Ravel notably the striking and austere Sonata had lessons in counterpoint at the same for Violin and Cello, and two works for time as his composition studies with Fauré. violin and piano: the original version of Tzigane and the Sonata for Violin and How does the Basque spirit mentioned by Piano, a work notable for its brilliant Ravel manifest itself in the music? The clue economy of means, and its innovative comes from an abandoned sketch for an ‘Blues’ movement. explicitly Basque work for piano and orchestra called Zazpiak Bat (sometimes Ravel’s Piano Trio was written at the end given as Zaspiak Bat) – the Basque coat of of one of his most productive periods, arms created at the end of the nineteenth finished just before the outbreak of World century as a rallying cry for those seeking War One, and immediately preceded by a union of all the Basque territories. ‘Zazpiak Daphnis et Chloé, Ma Mère l’Oye, the Bat’ means ‘From Seven, One’, and the Valses nobles et sentimentales, and the shield includes the three French Basque Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé. provinces and the four Spanish ones. Before any of these works were composed Zazpiak Bat was left unfinished by Ravel, (between 1908 and 1913), Ravel had and its overt nationalist inspiration became already contemplated a piano trio as a covert (apart from Ravel’s laconic reference project that appealed to him. On 26 to Basque colouring). But the alluringly lopsided main theme of the first movement process still further in the Trio section, eight-bar bass is repeated eleven times – There is little in the musical repertoire with was taken straight from his sketch for where the slow notes of the theme but the very formality of that seemingly which to compare it. The composer is in a Zazpiak Bat. In this beautifully constructed eventually become a counterpoint to a straightforward form brings out music of direct line of descent from our gentle and profound Couperin, albeit on a larger scale. movement, Basque folk music comes face reprise of the Scherzo – a magical moment profound seriousness marked by a kind of No pathos, no abstract intellectualism is to face with Sonata Form and there is never as well as a brilliant piece of metrical noble restraint: very much in the spirit of its found in this pure music, whose spontaneous the slightest sense of unease: what prevails organization by the composer. Baroque forebears. The ‘Final’ is flamboyant, restraint, lightness and buoyancy even Mozart is a combination of supreme craftsmanship brilliant and marked by irregular rhythms could never have surpassed. No matter whether and real depth of feeling. For the slow movement, Ravel turned to that once again recall Basque folk music. in the technique of the writing, harmony, the Baroque form of the ‘Passacaille’, a Finished in a hurry, just as war was declared, polyphony, rhythm or inspiration, everything is new, personal, totally original, and simple – The sources of inspiration for the Piano slow, stately ground bass. The structure is it is possible to hear an almost desperate the innate simplicity which is our secret, and Trio are varied. The second movement, ostensibly simple enough – the same sense of elation in this movement (and which constitutes the perfection of our greatest essentially the ‘Scherzo’, has the title maybe even forebodings of war in the works. ‘Pantoum’, a Malayan verse form that was trumpet-like fanfares of the development taken up enthusiastically by French poets section). Camille Saint-Saëns wrote two piano trios. such as Baudelaire and Victor Hugo. The The first was composed when Saint-Saëns construction of a Pantoum involves the Ravel’s Piano Trio was given a private was in his late twenties, while Piano Trio No. second and fourth lines of each four-line performance in November or December 2 in E minor, Op. 92, dates from almost thirty verse becoming the first and third lines 1914 at the home of the cellist Joseph years later. It was started at Pointe Pescade, of the next, and its subject matter has to Salmon, who was joined by Georges Enseco Algeria, in March 1892 and completed in deal with two different ideas presented on the violin and Alfredo Casella on the Geneva a few months later, in July 1892, simultaneously. Arguments have persisted cello. Ravel’s publisher Durand was present with some revisions made later in the about whether Ravel chose this title for and described it as ‘admirable’. The public autumn. As early as 1886 Saint-Saëns had its flavour of exoticism and otherness, or premiere took place a couple of months later written to his publisher Durand promising that whether he set out to produce a precise in the Salle Gaveau, on 28 January 1915, at he would turn to a new trio ‘soon’ after the musical equivalent of this unusual verse one of the concerts of the Société Musicale ‘Organ’ Symphony, and by 1891 he told form. Brian Newbould argued persuasivley Indépendante. Casella was again the pianist, Durand that he needed 'to awaked the little in an article for The Musical Times published joined on this occasion by Gabriel Willaume beast which is nibbling away in my head; in 1975 that Ravel followed the rules of the (violin) and Louis Feuillard (cello). Durand otherwise I won’t be able to do anything poem quite carefully, and also presented published the work a few months after this, worthwhile.’ The ‘little beast’ certainly did two ideas at the same time: the jagged in June 1915, and critical reaction to the Saint-Saëns’s bidding, and the Trio turned theme in quavers heard at the start, and appearance of this edition included a out to be one of Saint-Saëns’s most the more expansive, dance-like idea first particularly positive assessment by Ravel’s powerful chamber works. It is dedicated heard on violin and cello. He takes this Maurice Ravel friend, the critic Jean Marnold: to the Vicomtesse de Guitaut, previously Anna Hoskier, a fine pianist who had been same theme. A contrasting idea – cast in a pupil of Saint-Saëns, and was the daughter 5/4 rather than 5/8 – introduces flowing of his banker Émile Hoskier. piano semiquavers, heard against more fragmentary ideas in the strings. These Generally speaking, Saint-Saëns was resistant themes alternate, with a particularly to musical innovations, but he was quite ingenious variant of the 5/8 theme capable of creating inventive musical bringing the music back to the home key structures when he felt the need. The form of E major for the charming coda. of the Second Piano Trio is unusual in having five movements: two large-scale outer Marked ‘Andante con moto’, the third movements frame three shorter ones to movement is dominated by the passionate create an elegant symmetry. The ‘Allegro falling phrase heard on the piano at the non troppo’ opens with a theme on the very start and taken up in turn by the cello strings that seems to emerge from the and violin. This is not a long movement, gloom, rising on the piano’s delicate but it has considerable expressive intensity, wave-like arpeggios. The sense is of the in the manner of a lament, but closing in a start of an epic journey, and the treatment mood of consolation rather than despair. of this theme throughout the movement Like the second, the fourth movement is indicates that Saint-Saëns was aiming for a Scherzo substitute, in this case a rather music that was both serious and exquisitely dark-hued waltz. crafted. The gravity of the ideas and the expansive way in which they are presented The finale is ambitious and impressive.