NEW IMPRESSIONS: DEBUSSY & MORE

1. Allegro molto moderato
2. Lento
3. Allegro molto

Henriëtte Bosmans had a successful career as a pianist in the Netherlands in the 1920s and 30s, appearing as a soloist with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. She was less fortunate as a composer, initially running into the prejudice against female composers that was prevalent at the time. Later on, her performing career was curtailed: as a half-Jewish woman she was registered as a ‘Jewish case’ in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. After the war, Bosmans wrote a number of songs, and was awarded the Royal Order of Orange Nassau in 1951 – a recognition that came too late: she was always very ill and died the following year.

Bosmans’s String Quartet is in three movements. It was composed in 1927, the year in which she began studying with the outstanding Dutch composer of the time, Willem Pijper. She dedicated it to Pijper, noting on the manuscript that it was completed in time for his birthday on 8 September 1927. The Allegro molto moderato opens with a haunting idea in unison which blossoms into a movement full of unusual harmonies. A new faster section (in 7/8 time) is launched by the cello. After a recollection of the opening idea, the movement ends quietly with two plucked chords over a low cello note. The central Lento opens with a violin lament over sustained chords, its mood serious but with gentler, pastoral moments. The finale is marked by driving rhythms which make for an urgent and exciting close. Throughout the work, the influence of the quartets by Debussy and Ravel is often apparent, but this in not derivative music: even in a work from quite early in her composing career, Bosmans has an individual creative voice.

The first performance of this remarkable quartet was given on 28 January 1928 by the Amsterdam String Quartet, all members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Moderato
Sans vitesse et à l’aise
Vite et nerveusement rythmé 

Nadia Boulanger, teacher, conductor, early music pioneer and trusted adviser to the likes of Stravinsky and Poulenc, was also a gifted composer. Fiercely self-critical, she always claimed her own music was nothing like as significant as that of her brilliant younger sister, Lili, but with the rediscovery of Nadia’s music it has become clear that she was a remarkable talent in her own right. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine and subsequently studied composition with Fauré. Most of her music dates from between 1904 and 1918 (the year Lili died), including the Three Pieces for cello and piano, composed in 1914 and first published the following year. The first, in E flat minor, presents a song-like melody on the cello over a hushed piano part marked doux et vague. After a brief climactic central section, the opening music returns for a serene close in E flat major. The second piece, in A minor, treats a deceptively simple tune – almost a folksong – in an ingenious canon between the cello and the piano. The last piece, in C sharp minor, is quick, with a middle section that provides a contrast in both rhythm and texture to the playful but muscular mood of the rest.   

Nigel Simeone © 2022 

Debussy’s String Quartet was first performed at the Société Nationale de Musique on 29 December 1893 – almost exactly a year before he shocked Paris with the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, the most laconic manifestation of his revolutionary creative spirit. The Quartet, composed just after the Prélude, is one of his earliest mature works – a piece that still has some roots in the musical language of César Franck but in which a fresh and brilliant imagination can be heard, not just in the free handling of forms, but also in the spectacularly inventive writing for string instruments – something absorbed by Ravel in the Quartet he wrote a decade later. The first movement is robust and confident, while the second, with its extensive use of pizzicato, hints at the Javanese music that Debussy heard at the 1889 Exposition. The slow movement begins with fragments of the theme split between the lower instruments before being introduced in full by the first violin, over rich chromatic harmonies. The finale has clear thematic links with the first. It starts hesitantly, gradually building up both tension and speed, on a melodic idea that is presented in different guises before reaching the dazzling conclusion in G major. 

Nigel Simeone © 2011