A grand work for a grand finale: captivating charm and wit from George Onslow’s Nonet. Nicknamed the ‘French Beethoven’, this is a chance to hear one of his finest and largest-scale chamber works whose five movements move through an expressive array of moods from turbulence to a jubilant conclusion.
Steven Isserlis then joins pianist Tim Horton for a heartfelt lament by Gabriel Fauré, before we sign off with Tchaikovsky’s celebratory musical postcard, Souvenir de Florence. This hugely popular string sextet by the great Russian composer features both Steven Isserlis and Ensemble 360’s cellist Gemma Rosefield, and promises to be a fitting farewell to the Festival in our anniversary year.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“George Onslow, grandson of the first Earl of Onslow, is an interesting figure, straddling the twin worldsof London and Paris. Almost killed in a hunting accident – an incident which inspired his best-known work, a string quintet subtitled ’The Bullet’ – he sounds like a lively character, whose music was admired by Chopin. Tchaikovsky – who praised the piano quartet by Fauré that opened this festival – closes our programme with his irresistibly celebratory Souvenir de Florence. Party time!”
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ONSLOW George, Nonet in A Op.77
Allegro spirituoso
Scherzo. Agitato
Tema con variazioni
Finale. Largo – Allegretto quasi Allegro
Onslow was born in Clemont-Ferrand, the son of an aristocratic British family. He studied with Cramer and Dussek, and though travelling widely, he always remained loyal to the Auvergne working as a successful farmer as well as composing a large body of chamber music (including thirty-six string quartets) along with four symphonies and operas. His music was admired by Schumann and Mendelssohn, and the Nonet, composed in 1848, is dedicated to Prince Albert. The first movement has a nervous energy that is quite characteristic, and from the very start it’s clear that Onslow makes imaginative use of the ensemble. The Scherzo that follows has an unusual combination of austerity and charm, based on pithy Beethovenian main idea. The slow movement is theme with five variations. After a slow introduction, the finale is gently animated, working its way towards a dramatic conclusion.
Originally written as the slow movement of a planned cello sonata, the Élégie was first performed privately at the home of Fauré’s teacher and friend Saint-Saëns in June 1880. After abandoning the sonata (Fauré’s two cello sonatas – both magnificent works – came much later in his career), he decided to publish the Élégie as a stand-alone movement in 1883. It was dedicated to Jules Loeb who gave the first public performance, with Fauré at the piano, in a concert of the Société nationale de musique on 15 December 1883. The outer sections have a quiet solemnity which is underlined by the repeated piano chords heard at the start, over which the cello plays a melody seemingly laden with grief. The central section sees a move to a major key, and the arrival of a glorious lyrical theme – first on the piano, then the cello – which works up to a dramatic climax before a return to the sombre mood of the opening.
Allegro con spirito
Adagio cantabile e con moto
Allegro moderato
Allegro vivace
For Tchaikovsky, Souvenir de Florence was the one of his chamber works that gave him the most trouble. He had promised to write a piece for the St Petersburg Chamber Music Society in 1886 when the Society made him an honorary member, but after a false start in 1887, it was not until June–July 1890 that he composed the work. He found writing for string sextet problematic, as he wrote to his brother Modest in June 1890: ‘I began it three days ago and am writing with difficulty, not for lack of new ideas, but because of the novelty of the form. One requires six independent yet homogeneous voices. This is unimaginably difficult.’ By mid-July he was much happier with progress (‘at the moment I’m terribly pleased with myself’, he wrote to Modest), but the work was revised the following year after Tchaikovsky had heard a private performance. He was clearly taken aback by the results, telling Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov that he planned radical surgery ‘to alter the string sextet, which turned out to be astonishingly bad in all respects.’ Following extensive changes to the coda of the first movement, the middle of the third movement and the fugue in the finale, he was finally happy with the results and sent the score to Jurgenson for publication at the end of January 1892. The work is only tenuously connected with Florence: Tchaikovsky sketched one of the themes there while composing The Queen of Spades, but the Sextet was mostly composed at the house in Frolovskoye (about 100 miles west of Moscow) that he rented between 1888 and 1891. The first movement begins with a vigorous theme followed by a more lyrical idea that serves as a charming contrast. The Adagio starts with a theme that resembles a slowed-down recollection of the first movement, but this gives way to an expansive melody on the first violin, accompanied by pizzicato. The wraith-like central section of this movement is remarkable for the string effects demanded by the composer. The third movement is dominated by a theme that is redolent of a Russian folk tune, and the finale is also launched with a quick folk dance which is treated in a variety of ways including a rather unexpected fugue before heading to an affirmative close.
Nigel Simeone
CLOSE-UP FAMILY CONCERT: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS
A lively family concert, featuring five wind musicians (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn) and a very special guest singer, Roderick Williams (soloist at King Charles III’s Coronation) who will perform Vaughan Williams’ song ‘The Vagabond’. Together they breathe life into the wondrous world of chamber music.
They’ll play well-known classical favourites from Britten and Debussy to Haydn and Holst, alongside more recent works such as Anna Meredith’s playful portrait of a moth and Valerie Coleman’s celebratory Kwanza dance.
Perfect for 7-11 year olds, this is a lively, interactive concert, and a rare opportunity for families to experience the world-famous baritone Roderick Williams performing up close in the Crucible Playhouse!
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Programme: BRITTENI. Prologue from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1’30) HAYDN arr.ParryIV. Rondo-Allegretto from Divertimento No.1 (2’) ONSLOWIV. Finale (extract) from Wind Quintet(3’30) ARNOLDI. Allegro con brio from ‘Three Shanties’(2’30) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS arr. Morton ‘The Vagabond’ from Songs of Travel (3’) LIGETI III. Allegro grazioso from ‘6 Bagatelles’ (2’30) DEBUSSY‘Syrinx’(3’) BACEWICZI. Allegro from Quintet for Wind Instruments (3’) STRAVINSKY II. from ‘Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet’(1’) HOLSTIV. Air and Variations from Wind Quintet (4’) DANZIIV. Allegretto from Wind Quintet No.2(3’) MEREDITH‘Moth’ from ‘Tripotage Miniatures’(2’30) COLEMANUmoja(2’45)
FAURÉ Piano Quintet No.1 (31’) RAVEL Chansons Madécasses (13’) POULENC Sextet (18’) FAURÉ La Bonne Chanson (33′)
Musical national treasure Roderick Williams, soloist at King Charles III’s Coronation and Singer-in-Residence with Music in the Round, returns to the Crucible Playhouse with Ensemble 360 for a magical tour through the City of Light.
Fauré’s first Piano Quintet was a labour of love that he nurtured over many years, and the song cycles and works for violin he wrote alongside it echo through this exquisitely constructed piece.
Poulenc’s kaleidoscopic sextet encompasses jazz, ragtime, pastiche of Mozart and a tribute to Ravel, whose ‘Madagascan’ songs they follow, in this programme luxuriating in the many sounds of fin de siècle Paris.
Culminating in Fauré’s intricate song-cycle, crafted from the poems of Paul Verlaine, this concert reunites Ensemble 360, with Music in the Round’s singer-in-residence Roderick Williams for the first time since 2017.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“What a treat it will be to hear Roderick Williams in Fauré’s seductive ‘La Bonne Chanson’ (the first time he’s ever sung it, I understand!). Before that Ravel takes us away from Paris on a magic carpet for his bittersweet Chansons Madécasses. Poulenc is perhaps the ultimate Parisian composer, and so manages to make an appearance here – despite his disgraceful sin of (apparently) not appreciating Fauré’s music. Well – apart from that, he’s a wonderful composer…”
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FAURÉ Gabriel, Piano Quintet No.1
Molto moderato
Adagio
Allegretto moderato
No other work by Fauré gave his as much trouble as the First Piano Quintet. The earliest sketches date from 1887 (in the same sketch-book as the ‘Pie Jesu’ from the Requiem), the bulk of the composition was done between 1890 and 1894, and the work was completed and revised in 1903–5. When it was published in 1907, it was not in Paris, but in New York, issued by G. Schirmer. The first performance was given on 23 March 1906 when Fauré himself and a quartet led by Eugène Ysaÿe (the work’s dedicatee) played it in Brussels at the home of Octave Maus. A week later (30 March) they gave it at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
One early enthusiast for the work was the young Aaron Copland. In the early 1920s he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger – a Fauré pupil – and it was through her that Copland came to love this music. In 1924, he published an article in Musical Quarterly entitled ‘Gabriel Fauré: a neglected master’, likening Fauré to Brahms, with ‘a genius as great, a style as individual and a technique as perfect’. Copland described the first movement of the quintet: ‘The initial theme is an excellent example of that continuity of line that [is] peculiar to Faure’s late manner. A short subsidiary theme for strings alone, which later plays so important a part in the development, brings us to the second idea – an ardent, yearning phrase which must convince the most recalcitrant ear of Faure’s great powers of melody-making. Note with what technical mastery the recapitulation is made the inevitable climax of the development and is so varied as to take away all feeling of repetition.’ The extended Adagio – melancholy and introspective – is followed by a last movement that Copland described as ‘a sort of combination Scherzo–Finale’.
Nigel Simeone
RAVEL Maurice, Chanson Madécasses
Nahandove, O belle nahandove! Aoua! Aoua! Mefiez-vous des blancs! Il est doux de se coucher
The Chansons madécasses, scored for voice, flute, cello and piano, were commissioned by the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and composed in 1925–6. The texts by Évariste de Parny (1753–1814) are among the earliest prose poems in French, published in 1787. Equally striking are the strong anti-colonialist sentiments of these poems written by a French aristocrat who had been born on what is now the island of Réunion, east of Madagascar. Ravel himself wrote that the songs included ‘a new element, dramatic, even erotic, as a result of the subject matter of Parny’s poems’, and there is no doubting the sensuous erotic charge in ‘Nahandove’. But there is drama of a different kind in the powerfully anti-slavery themes of the second song, ‘Aoua!’, beginning with the warning ‘Méfiez-vous des blancs’ (‘Do not trust the white men’), its words lamenting the violence of the settlers who dispossessed and then enslaved the indigenous population. Ravel creates a harsh and terrifying musical counterpart for the poem, with unflinching dissonance, piercing high notes and motoric rhythms. This is Ravel at his most experimental, and also at his most provocative. The third song comes as a relief, somehow serving to ease the impact of ‘Aoua!’ And yet for all the stillness and simplicity of ‘Il est doux de se coucher’, there is no easy serenity.
POULENC Francis, Sextet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn and Piano FP 100
Très vite et emporté
Divertissement. Andantino
Finale. Prestissimo
The Sextet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn was a work over which Poulenc lavished a great deal of time and effort – the final results did not come easily or quickly. First performed in its original version at an all-Poulenc concert at the Salle Chopin in Paris on 19 June 1931 (and described in the Chesterian magazine as one of two ‘intelligent and lovely’ new compositions heard that evening), Poulenc reworked the Sextet several times before it reached a definitive form in 1939. On 29 August 1939 he wrote to Marie-Blanche Polignac that he had ‘thoroughly revised my entire Sextet (now very good)’. The result of this decade of reflection and rewriting is indeed ‘very good’: Poulenc’s most imposing chamber work is notable from the outset for its muscularity and seriousness – though the central ‘Divertissement’ provides an oasis of Mozartian repose – and, after an almost wild Prestissimo, the finale closes with an epilogue notable for its solemn stillness: Stravinsky-like austerity here is softened by Poulenc’s more emollient harmonic language. The first performance of the Sextet in its finished form took place during the early months of the German Occupation of Paris, on 9 December 1940, at a concert given by the Association de Musique Contemporaine, with Poulenc at the piano and the Quintette à vent de Paris. Poulenc kept the manuscript to himself during the years of the war and eventually sent it to Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen for publication in 1945. This brought to an end what Poulenc’s biographer Carl B. Schmidt has aptly described as ‘one of the most complicated compositional sagas of Poulenc’s career.’ Poulenc recorded the Sextet not with the original French players, but with the Philadelphia Wind Quintet in March 1960, during one of his last visits to the United States.
La bonne chanson was the most ambitious of Fauré’s settings of Verlaine’s poetry. The first eight songs were completed in 1893 but the ninth was only added in February 1894. A true cycle, La bonne chanson has several recurring themes which bring musical unity to the whole structure. According to the Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux, the result is ‘far more than just a volume of songs. It reaches the proportions almost of a vocal symphony.’ The inspiration for the work was the singer Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré became infatuated in the early 1890s. She gave Fauré advice about revisions while he was working on the songs, and sang them in private at her home in Bougival, with the composer at the piano. La bonne chanson was first given in a concert by the tenor Maurice Bagès on 25 April 1894. Bagès also gave the first London performance on 1 April 1898 (at Frank Schuster’s home in Old Queen Street) and it was for this occasion that Fauré made the version for piano and string quintet (though he later wondered if this arrangement was ‘unnecessary’, it has a tone colour all its own, quite distinct from the solo piano version). Reactions to the new cycle were mixed: Marcel Proust was enchanted by it, writing that ‘I adore this collection’, but he noted that Debussy (who later married Emma Bardac) thought it was ‘too complicated.’ History has come down firmly on Proust’s side: La bonne chanson is recognised as one of Fauré’s greatest achievements, combining sophisticated musical design with lyrical inspiration.
R SCHUMANN Gesänge der Frühe No.1 (3′) FAURÉ Nocturne No.13 (8′) RAMEAU Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes (7′) MENDELSSOHN Variations Sérieuses Op.54 (12′) R SCHUMANN Waldszenen (extracts) Einsame Blumen, Verrufene Stelle, Freundliche Landschaft, Vogel als Prophet (10′) RAVEL Miroirs (extracts) Oiseaux tristes, Alborada del gracioso, Vallée des cloches (18′)
No interval
Named ‘Critics’ Classical Music Breakthrough Artist’ in The Times Arts Awards 2021, Mishka Rushdie Momen was praised as “one of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists” shortly before she gave her debut recital at the Crucible Playhouse in January 2022. This recital highlights her versatility, with music encompassing three centuries, from the baroque lyricism of Rameau to the impressionism of Ravel. The work of Robert Schumann also features, a composer with whom Mishka has a special affinity and of whom she is a sensitive and arresting interpreter.
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SCHUMANN Robert, Gesänge der Frühe No.1
Nature was always a potent source for composers, and this recital includes several pieces which were inspired by the sights and sounds of the natural world. Robert Schumann (1810–1856) composed the Gesänge der Frühe, Op.133, in October 1853, just after completing his Violin Concerto. The five pieces were described by Clara Schumann in her diary as ‘dawn-songs, very original as always but hard to understand, their tone is so very strange’. This elusive mood is apparent in the first piece, marked Im ruhigen tempo. A chorale-like theme, occasionally coloured with Schumann’s characteristic harmonic dissonances, the music was described by Schumann himself as ‘impressions at the approach and growth of the morning, but more as an expression of feeling than painting.’
Nigel Simeone
FAURÉ Gabriel, Nocturne No.13
Gabriel Fauré composed thirteen nocturnes for piano between 1875 and 1921. The last of them, No.13 in B minor, Op.119, was completed on 31 December 1921, two weeks after the death of his friend Saint-Saëns. This event may have influenced the noble and introspective mood of the work, much of which seems to inhabit a world of private meditation, though it rises to a climax of great intensity before a return of the opening material. This substantial work moves through passion, anger, consolation, and grief, finally reaching what the British musicologist Robert Orledge described as ‘a visionary coda’ which gradually sinks into silence.
Nigel Simeone
RAMEAU Jean-Philippe, Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) published his first collection of harpsichord pieces in 1706 and further collections appeared in the 1720s. Though widely admired at the time, these works lapsed into obscurity and it took their rediscovery at the end of the nineteenth century, when a handsome edition, prepared by Camille Saint-Saëns, was published by Durand in 1895. Rameau’s collections mostly comprise dance movements, such as the two Rigaudons and ‘Double’ from the 1724 volume of Pièces de clavecin. This was also the source of one of his most celebrated imitative pieces, Le rappel des oiseauxwith its evocations of chirruping birdsong, and of Les tendres plaintes, a more subtle evocation of melancholy.
Nigel Simeone
MENDELSSOHN Felix, Variations Sérieuses Op.54
Felix Mendelssohn’sVariations sérieuseswere completed on 4 June 1841 and had been written to encourage contributions for a statue of Beethoven in Bonn. The work was published along with pieces by Liszt, Chopin, Moscheles and Henselt (among others) in a fund-raising ‘Beethoven-Album’. The piece was much admired at the time by Ignaz Moscheles, Mendelssohn’s friend and fellow-contributor to the album, who often included it in his recital programme. It comprises an original theme followed by 17 sharply contrasted variations, the first group gradually building momentum, a solemn chorale (Variation 14), and the brilliant virtuosity of the closing pages.
Schumann’s Waldszenen, Op.82, dates from 1848, just after finishing his opera Genoveva, the last act of which takes place in a forest. The woodland inspiration evidently persisted and the new set of pieces was completed in January 1849, with the last of them, ‘Vogel als Prophet’ (‘The Prophet Bird’) added as an inspired afterthought. One early review captured the spirit of these pieces, delighting in ‘the enigmatic rustlings, the distant melodies, the mystical flowers in this magical forest.’
Nigel Simeone
RAVEL Maurice, Miroirs (extracts) Oiseaux tristes, Alborada del gracioso, Vallée des cloches
Maurice Ravel composed Miroirsin 1904–5, and each piece was dedicated to a fellow member of Les Apaches, the group of musical friends formed in 1903. They included the pianist Ricardo Viñes (‘Oiseaux tristes’), the critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (‘Alborada del gracioso’) and the composer Maurice Delage (‘La vallée des cloches’). ‘Oiseaux triste’ is an evocation of a solitary bird, joined by others in due course. ‘Alborada del gracioso’ is a virtuoso piece, based on the rhythms and melodic shapes of an exciting Spanish folk dance. Like Debussy, Ravel heard the gamelan music at the 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris, and memories of those sounds may well have been in his mind when he composed ‘La vallée des cloches’, a piece in which different layers of bell sounds mingle in the most atmospheric way.
Nigel Simeone
FOCUS ON FAURÉ
Steven Isserlis, Irène Duval, Roy Howat, Tom McKinney & Dr Caroline Potter
Crucible Adelphi Room, Sheffield
Friday 24 May 2024, 2.30pm
Tickets £5 Strictly limited to Friends of Music in the Round
Steven is joined by Irène Duval, Caroline Potter and Roy Howat to chat about one of his favourite composers, Gabriel Fauré, in celebration of his centenary year. Chaired by Tom McKinney.
Violinist Irène Duval, a prize-winner at the 2021 Young Classical Artists Trust International Auditions, opens this concert with a monumental sonata written by Fauré’s violin virtuoso pupil, George Enescu. Irène joins Ensemble 360 for Fauré’s only string quartet, an ethereal piece that derives its principal melody from Fauré’s early Violin Concerto. It was his final work and is a fitting swan-song that resolves into an ultimately life-affirming finale.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“Enescu’s impassioned Violin Sonata No.2 reveals the strong influence of his revered teacher Fauré. Like his beloved Schumann, Fauré used a theme from his Violin Concerto in his final work, his only string quartet. Unlike Schumann, however, Fauré did so deliberately; having discarded the Violin Concerto, he must have been loath to waste such a beautiful melody. It provides a poignantly human response to the chant-like opening of a work that gently, lovingly bids us farewell. Fauré’s work here is done, he seems to tell us; and it is time for him to pass on to the better world he has so often allowed us to experience through his music.”
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ENESCU George, Violin Sonata No.2 Op.6
Assez mouvementé Tranquillement Vif
Born in Romania, George Enescu was a child prodigy and he entered the Vienna Conservatory at the age of seven. His teachers there included Joseph Hellmesberger and Robert Fuchs, and in 1891 Enescu was introduced to Brahms. After graduating in Vienna at the age of twelve, Enescu moved to Paris where he studied with Fauré and André Gedalge – both of whom also taught Ravel. Enescu’s Violin Sonata No. 2 was written in April 1899 when he was 17 years old – and still a student. Its premiere was given in Paris on 22 February 1900 by Jacques Thibaud with the composer at the piano, and the sonata was dedicated to Thibaud and his pianist brother, Joseph. Enescu himself recalled that the opening theme first came into his head during a walk when he was 14: ‘I carried it inside me for three years; then, at the age of seventeen, I wrote my Second Violin Sonata in the space of a fortnight.’ As Enescu’s biographer Noel Malcolm has noted, the work has ‘an extraordinary unity, mainly because of the way it is pervaded by the long, mysterious … theme which opens the first movement.’ This theme is developed and transformed throughout the Sonata, giving the whole work a powerful coherence. The musical language has occasional echoes of Fauré, but even in this early work, Enescu was a highly original creative voice, even incorporating elements of the modes and harmonies of his native Romanian folk music in the slow movement.
Fauré worked on a violin concerto in 1878–9, but the project was destined to remain unfinished. Though the first two movements were performed by the violinist Ovide Musin and the Colonne Orchestra on 12 April 1880, the finale was never written. The slow movement of the concerto was destroyed, but was probably reworked as the Andante for violin and piano Op.75. The first movement – lyrical and expansive – survived complete, and turned out to be a surprisingly fruitful source for the composer: Fauré’s biographer Robert Orledge noted that its two main themes ‘proved far better suited to the more intimate medium of the String Quartet’ when they were reused ‘in the light of a lifetime’s experience’ in his last work, written in 1923–4.
Fauré’s String Quartet was his last composition, completed in 1924 shortly before his death. It was also his first chamber work without piano. For the first movement he drew on ideas composed 45 years earlier for his Violin Concerto, but now reworked in a much more compact and tightly organised sonata form structure. The Andante was written first, in September 1923 at Annecy. The opening Allegro moderato was completed in Paris and the third movement (combining elements of scherzo and finale) was finished in 1924, back in Annecy. The result is a work of great expressive power, with, as the British musicologist Robert Orledge has noted, ‘the craftsmanship being so consummate that we need to listen hard even to notice the joins or the thematic counterpoint that gives the Quartet its virile strength.’ On 12 September 1924, Fauré wrote to his wife from Annecy announcing that ‘yesterday evening I finished the finale. So that’s the quartet finished’. A month later, weakened by a bout of pneumonia, Fauré returned to Paris where he died peacefully early in the morning of 4 November. Two days later, the composer Albert Roussel wrote a moving tribute in the magazine Comoedia: Fauré ‘occupied a place apart in the history of music and, without noise or fuss or meaningless gesture, he pointed the way towards marvellous horizons overflowing with freshness and light.’
N BOULANGER Three pieces for cello and piano (8’) DEBUSSY Cello Sonata (12’) RAVEL Sonata for violin and cello (20’) R SCHUMANN (arr. Isserlis) Violin Concerto (mvt 2) (12’) R SCHUMANN Ghost Variations for piano (12’) FAURÉ Piano Trio (21’)
Three acclaimed musicians and frequent collaborators perform music they adore. This thoughtfully crafted programme celebrates the musical loves and legacy of the French composer, Gabriel Fauré.
Highlights include our Guest Curator’s arrangement of a movement from Schumann’s beloved Violin Concerto, which shares a theme with the delicate and haunting ‘Ghost Variations’ for piano; the final work by one of the giants of Romantic music. Fauré’s miraculous Piano Trio, his penultimate work, radiates ecstatic joy to conclude what promises to be a very special evening of music.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“Schumann’s Geister Variations for piano have a tragic history: they were effectively his final work, written in the last days before he was taken to the asylum where he was to spend his remaining years. He believed that the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn, surrounded by angels, had appeared to him in a dream and dictated the theme; he seems never to have realised that he had actually composed the theme earlier, as the violin’s main melody in the slow movement of his violin concerto (as well as another, much earlier, version in a ‘song for the young’). The variations really seem to be his farewell to life. Fauré’s Piano Trio, although his penultimate work, is quite different, pulsing with ecstatic energy from its opening bars; the slow movement is simply breathtaking – I know nothing like it in the whole of music. For me, this is one of Fauré’s very greatest works.”
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BOULANGER Nadia, Three pieces for cello and piano
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.
Prologue. Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto – Poco animando
Sérénade. Modérément animé
Final. Animé, léger et nerveux
‘Where is French music? Where are the old harpsichordists who had so much true music?’ It was thoughts like this that prompted Debussy to embark on a series of sonatas at the start of World War One. Weakened by cancer, he only lived to complete three of them. The Cello Sonata was the first to be finished, in the summer of 1915, and it was originally going to have a title: ‘Pierrot angry with the moon’. As well as its links to a vanished past, the Cello Sonata has debts to more recent music including use of a cyclic theme. Debussy used this device in his early String Quartet but now there is greater refinement and austerity. The first movement opens with a gesture that introduces the motif which unites many of the musical ideas in the work (and which recalls Baroque ornamentation). The second movement is a ghostly Serenade full of enigmatic harmonies, and this leads to a more flowing and animated finale which seems reluctant to settle until the closing D minor chords.
In 1920, Ravel was asked to contribute to a musical supplement in memory of Debussy for the Revue musicale (other contributors included Bartók, Satie and Stravinsky). This ‘Tombeau’ for Debussy (with a front cover specially drawn by Dufy) appeared in December 1920 and included a ‘Duo’ for violin and cello that would become the first movement of the Sonata for Violin and Cello. It was another two years before Ravel completed the other movements and the whole work was published in 1922 with a dedication to Debussy’s memory. Ravel himself described the austere, pared-down language of the Sonata as ‘stripped to the bone’ and said that ‘harmonic charm is renounced’. The Sonata is also remarkable for its thematic unity, and some ingenious cyclic transformations. For instance, the violin theme heard at the start returns later in the work as do other ideas. The Scherzo suggests that Ravel was familiar with Kodály’s 1914 Duo for violin and cello: Ravel includes elements of Hungarian music in a movement of formidable drive and energy. The slow movement is stark and serious and after building slowly to an impassioned climax, its ending is remote and strange. The finale is brilliantly written for both instruments, bringing this extraordinary work to an athletic close, the dissonances finally resolving on to a chord of C major.
SCHUMANN Robert (arr. Isserlis), Violin Concerto (mvt.2)
Schumann wrote his Violin Concerto in September and October 1853 for his friend Joseph Joachim. Though Joachim played it through with the Hannover Court Orchestra for the composer, he never performed it in public, coming to believe that it was the product of Schumann’s disturbed mental state at the time. Evidently Clara Schumann and Brahms agreed, as the concerto was not included in the edition of Robert’s collected works which they prepared. It was not until 1937 that the work was given its belated premiere. The slow movement is the expressive heart of the work, its main theme very similar to that of the Ghost Variations, though in a different key. Its intimate character – in the style of an intermezzo – lends itself very well to the present arrangement for piano trio.
In February 1854, Schumann’s mental health was in a steep decline; at the end of that month he attempted suicide and, after being rescued from the river, asked to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Endenich, where he was to remain until his death. The ‘Ghost’ Variations were composed in the midst of this traumatic crisis. Dogged by increasingly disturbing visions, on the night of 17 February he claimed to hear angels singing a theme which he immediately wrote down – though in fact it is very similar to the slow movement of his Violin Concerto, composed six months earlier. A few days after this vision, Schumann started to compose a set of variations on the ‘angel’ theme, writing out a fair copy on 27 February. Before finishing it, he left the house and threw himself into the Rhine. After being brought home, he finished the work the next day. It was the last music he wrote. A year later, Clara Schumann had a copy made which she gave to Brahms (who subsequently composed variations on the theme as his Op.23). It is impossible to imagine the harrowing circumstances in which Schumann wrote this work which comprises a theme followed by five variations. Apart from the copy made for Brahms, Clara kept the work entirely private and it was not published until 1939.
1. Allegro ma non troppo
2. Andantino
3. Allegro vivo
Fauré retired as Director of the Paris Conservatoire in 1920, at the age of 75. Though he was increasingly troubled by a kind of deafness that distorted musical sounds, he produced several late works that demonstrate a wonderful economy and concentration: the Second Piano Quintet, Second Cello Sonata and the song cycle L’Horizon chimérique were completed in 1921, and his only String Quartet was to occupy him from 1923 until just before he died the following year. The Piano Trio was started in his favourite retreat of Annecy-le-Vieux in August 1922 and his original idea was to write it for clarinet, cello and piano but he soon settled on having a violin as the top part. Progress was slow. Fauré wrote to his wife: ‘I can’t work for long stretches of time. My worst problem is perpetual tiredness.’ There’s no sense of fatigue in this work, partly because Fauré took his time. The slow movement was the first to be completed, and the outer movements of the Trio were finished by February 1923. The first performance was given on 12 May 1923 at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique by Fauré was too ill to attend. He did hear a performance the following year given by the celebrated trio of Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals. The music demonstrates Fauré at his most subtle harmonically and rhythmically in the first movement, at his most elegantly restrained in the slow movement, and at his most vigorous in the finale (the resemblance between its main theme and ‘Vesti la giubba’ from Pagliacci – an opera Fauré particularly disliked – was, according to Fauré himself, entirely accidental).
Nigel Simeone
“An extraordinarily moving performance where time, very briefly, seemed to stand still.”
RAVEL Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré for violin & piano (3′) SAINT-SAËNS Oboe Sonata (12′) ADÈS Alchymia for clarinet quintet (24′) MESSAGER Solo de Concours for solo clarinet (6′) FRANCK Piano Quintet (35′)
The heart of César Franck’s Piano Quintet contains some of the most darkly passionate music he ever composed, surrounded by storms and drama that make this magnificent work a truly captivating experience. Thomas Adès is one of our greatest living composers and his chamber music glimmers with intricate beauty and exquisite colours. Alchymia is inspired by the world of Tudor England, and Adès makes reference to composers of that time as well as the influence of Shakespeare. Opening with Maurice Ravel’s homage to his teacher Gabriel Fauré, this concert looks back to those who shaped him and forward to those writing today for whom he remains a guiding light.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“Thomas Adès, with his deep love of both Couperin and Fauré, makes a guest appearance in this mostly Gallic affair, with his magnificent clarinet quintet. The programme ends with César Franck’s stormy piano quintet, a shockingly bold outpouring from a composer who until then had been known for his quiet piety; it is said that the transformation was effected by his passionate love for Augusta Holmés.If so, that was quite a passion!”
This concert is generously sponsored by Kim Staniforth.
Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same time. Find out more here.
RAVEL Maurice, Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré for violin and piano
Ravel composed this Berceuse for a special Fauré number of the Revue musicale. He had remained on friendly terms with his former teacher and was thus delighted to contribute to the special celebratory supplement entitled Hommage à Gabriel Fauré (the other contributors were also Fauré pupils: Georges Enesco, Florent Schmitt, Louis Aubert, Charles Koechlin, Paul Ladmirault and Roger-Ducasse). The ‘name of Gabriel Fauré’ of Ravel’s title was a representation of his name in music: a legend at the head of Ravel’s score shows how ‘Gabriel Fauré’ was transformed into a melody based on the notes GABDBEE FAGDE. This short piece is marked to be played ‘Semplice’ and the theme is presented by a muted violin over piano chords.
Nigel Simeone
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Oboe Sonata in D, Op.166
Andantino Ad libitum. Allegretto Molto allegro
Composed in May–June 1921, this is one of three woodwind sonatas composed by Saint-Saëns at the very end of his life. It is dedicated to Louis Bas, first oboe of the Paris Opéra and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. The opening has an eighteenth-century flavour and the whole work is notable for its restraint and classical poise. One of the most memorable moments in this exquisitely crafted piece occurs at the start of the second movement, where the oboe plays freely over arpeggiated chords on the piano before moving into an elegant triple-time Allegretto. The Finale, in quick compound time, is delicately written and witty.
The clarinet quintet Alchymia is woven from four threads leading out of the alchemical world of Elizabethan London. The movement titles refer to:
William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1611 – the king’s eyes transformed by the sea into pearls.
The Woods So Wild 1612 – Tudor popular song transformed by William Byrd into keyboard divisions (variations).
Lachrymae 1600 – (Tears) – John Dowland’s lute-song, which he transformed into viol consort Fantasias.
Divisions on a Lute-song: Wedekind’s Round – variations on the playwright Frank Wedekind’s Lautenlied (lute-song), which is played by clarinet, imitating a barrel-organ in the London street, in the final scene of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu.
MESSAGER André, Solo de concours for solo clarinet
Starting in 1897, the French Ministry of Education commissioned a new solo de concours for the annual competition at the Paris Conservatoire. Within a few years, these included works by Charles-Marie Widor, André Messager, Augusta Holmès, Reynaldo Hahn and Debussy (the Première rhapsodie). Messager’s piece was written for the competition in 1899. By this time, he had become an extremely successful theatre composer, with works such as the ballet Les deux pigeons and the comic opera Véronique, but in 1898 he agreed to become conductor of the Opéra-comique in Paris and for several years had much less time for composing. He conducted the first performances in France of Puccini’s Tosca and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel as well as the world premieres of Charpentier’s Louise and, most importantly, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, a performance which prompted Debussy to describe Messager as ‘the ideal conductor’. A lifelong friend of Fauré, Messager was an astonishingly versatile musician and his Solo de concours is an attractive demonstration of his ability to test virtuosity at the same time as producing memorable melodies. An Allegro non troppo gives way to a central Andante before a return of the opening material and a brief, brilliant coda.
1. Molto moderato quasi lento
2. Lento, con molto sentimento
3. Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco
Born in Liège (now in Belgium), César Franck first established his reputation in Paris as supremely gifted organist at the church of St, Clotilde, where he became famous for his improvisations, but as he grew older he became more innovative – and hugely influential – as a composer. Following his appointment as a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, his pupils included Chausson and Duparc, as well as organists such as Vierne. Unlike Saint-Saëns, Franck was not particularly prolific, but his three late chamber music masterpieces – the Violin Sonata, String Quartet and the present Quintet – demonstrate a composer of striking originality at the height of his powers. The Quintet was composed between Autumn 1878 and July 1879, and first performed at the concerts of the Société Nationale de Musique in Paris on 17 January 1880. It caused something of an uproar, with Franck’s pupils wildly enthusiastic, and other members of the audience stunned into silence. Fellow-composer Édouard Lalo described the Quintet as ‘an explosion’ – an apt description for what is certainly one of Franck’s most searing and emotional works. It wasn’t only the audience who were baffled. Franck has dedicated the piece to Saint-Saëns who played the piano at the premiere, but he was dismissive of it. In a particularly insulting gesture, he walked off stage at the end of the performance and left the manuscript that Franck had copied specially for him on the piano.
This expansive and grandly-conceived Piano Quintet is a fine example of Franck’s use of cyclic form, where themes are woven through all three movements. Unlike Brahms’s Piano Quintet (in the same key), Franck has no Scherzo, but moments such as the ostinato-driven start of the Finale ensure that there’s no shortage of urgency and fire in the work. At the close the work’s main motto theme returns in a triumphant transformation.
FAURÉ Piano Quartet No.1 (29′) FARRENC Nonet (33′)
No interval
A spectacular launch for Sheffield Chamber Music Festival, showcasing two spellbinding works in the intimacy of the Crucible Playhouse. A passionate Piano Quartet by Gabriel Fauré – whose music our Guest Curator Steven Isserlis has described as “uniquely moving and uplifting”– opens the evening.
Louise Farrenc’s triumphant Nonet follows, with nine musicians filling the stage to perform a piece full of glorious melodies and radiant colours.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“It seems fitting to begin the festival with Fauré’s first, and still most popular, work for chamber ensemble, followed by a large-scale work by one of the finest 19th century French composers, Louise Farrenc, whose music is enjoying a revival. About time!”
Welcome drinks To celebrate the start of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival, all ticket-holders are invited to enjoy a free drink with us in the Crucible Foyer after this concert.
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FAURÉ Gabriel, Piano Quartet No.1 in C Minor, Op.15
Fauré’s glorious First Piano Quartet was composed over a four-year period (1876–79) and was given its premiere at the Société Nationale de Musique in February 1880. In 1883 Fauré revised the last movement, and it is in this version that the work was published. It is dedicated to the Belgian violinist Hubert Léonard (1819–1890). The first movement opens with a stirring unison string theme punctuated by syncopated piano chords, contrasted with a more lyrical second idea. The Scherzo begins with pizzicato chords over which the piano traces a melody of sparkling delicacy. Roles are reversed in the Trio section – the piano supplying the accompaniment to a theme of ravishing beauty and refinement presented by the strings. The slow movement was said by Fauré himself to be a lament for the sudden ending of his engagement to Marianne Viardot (one of Pauline Viardot’s daughters) – expressed through music of eloquent, passionate restraint. The finale is both exciting (with the dotted rhythms of the opening theme) and radiant (the arching second theme), crowned by a conclusion of unquenchable ardour.
With the first performance of this Nonet in 1850, Louise Farrenc achieved her greatest success as a composer – so much so that as a result she was able demand (and to get) a teaching salary for her job at the Paris Conservatoire that was the same as that paid to her male colleagues – a remarkable coup in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The premiere took place on 19 March 1850 at the Salle Erard and the ensemble was led by a brilliant young prodigy: Joseph Joachim – still in his teens but already an artist who was in demand all over Europe. Coincidentally, the violin has some unusually florid moments in the Nonet, including a cadenza at the end of the first movement. More remarkable, though, is the skill with which Farrenc shares the musical argument throughout the instruments, though it’s not surprising when we note that she was an accomplished composer of orchestral works including three symphonies, the last of which had been played in Paris a year earlier, in 1849.
Given the quality and originality of this music, it’s puzzling that Farrenc is not better known. As well as having to battle with prejudice against her gender, she had another issue to face: for composers to enjoy really big success in nineteenth-century Paris they needed to write operas, and Farrenc’s interests lay entirely in instrumental music. Still, the Nonet was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm, though her music lapsed into obscurity after her death in 1875. In the last twenty years or so Farrenc has enjoyed a well-deserved revival, with recordings of all her major chamber and orchestral works.
The Nonet is in four movements and has the combination of melodic inventiveness and charm that music by lesser composers often lacks. With echoes of Beethoven, Schubert and Spohr, this is the work of a serious and gifted musician who has a genuinely individual style. The fluency with which the violin cadenza merges seamlessly into the end of the movement is a mark of this. The rather Schubertian opening to the slow movement reveals a superb melodist, and the plucked strings and spiky interjections at the start of the Scherzo – and the rampaging tune that eventually emerges – are vastly appealing and characterful. After a slow introduction, the finale feels easy-going but makes considerable demands on the players.
When King Colin sets his sights on finding the famous Golden Sausage, there’s only ONE person for the job: Sir Scallywag! But will the six-year-old knight be mighty enough to defeat the filthy trolls and win the Stinkiest Battle Ever?
Paul Rissmann’s much-loved musical retelling of Giles Andreae and Korky Paul’s best-selling picture book returns. With narration, visuals from the book and lots of music, this is a brilliant first concert for 3–7 year-olds.
Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same time. Find out more here.
“My own seven and five-year-olds who were enchanted by the show, one rated it ‘ten thumbs up’ and the other gave it ‘1,000 out of 10’. Both were keen to have the Sir Scallywag story read to them repeatedly that night too.”
SAINT-SAËNS Morceau de concert for horn and piano (9’)
Bassoon Sonata (12’) Les odeurs de Paris (5’) L’assassinat du duc de guise (19’) The Carnival of the Animals (22’)
Camille Saint-Saëns’ most celebrated work, ‘The Carnival of the Animals’ is a work unlike any other, transporting the listener into a musical menagerie that includes a swan, a tortoise, lions and a plunge into a truly magical aquarium. It is presented here alongside rarely performed pieces including ‘Les odeurs de Paris’, a musical riot, with the addition of trumpets and children’s toys to convey the many smells of Paris. Early French film The Assassination of the Duke of Guise is one of the very first to feature an original film score. Written by Saint-Saëns, the music will be performed live, conducted by George Morton, alongside a screening of the film in a celebration of the beloved French composer.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“Saint-Saëns was a marvel in every way. Poet, playwright, philosopher, astronomer, classical scholar, animal rights activist, and so on – the list is endless; and this was in addition to being a master pianist, organist, conductor – and of course, composer. In his own words, he produced music as an apple-tree produces apples – but what an amazing variety of that fruit! Reams of music, ranging from witty to profound, conventionally charming to experimental, grand to intimate – he is a composer whom it is impossible to pigeonhole. We will hear a rich variety of his oeuvre, including a film score (the first ever written by a well-known composer); a party piece with toy instruments; his very last work – the most famous of all bassoon sonatas; and finally that imperishable jewel, the ‘Carnival of the Animals’.”
Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same time. Find out more here.
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Morceau de concert for horn and piano
Originally called Fantaisie, the Morceau de concert was composed in October 1887 and a version with orchestral accompaniment quickly followed. It was dedicated to Henri Chaussier, inventor of a new type of valve horn (known as the ‘Cor Chaussier’), the specific instrument for which Saint-Saëns wrote this piece. It is in one continuous movement, divided into three distinct sections: a vigorous Allegro moderato in F minor gives way to a lyrical Adagio in A flat major followed by the concluding Allegro non troppo, which quickly moves from F minor to F major and a brilliant conclusion.
Nigel Simeone
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Bassoon Sonata
In spite of embracing the latest technology with his pioneering film score, Saint-Saëns never came to terms with more progressive musical trends as he grew older. He could find ‘no style, logic or common sense’ in Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and was appalled by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (‘If that’s music, I’m a baboon’, he declared). Increasingly resistant to modernism, and viewed as something of a musical dinosaur, he turned instead to strict classical forms and traditional harmony, but always with beautifully-crafted results. In the last year of his life, Saint-Saëns wrote three sonatas scored for what he described to a friend as ‘rarely considered instruments’: oboe, clarinet and bassoon – and he had plans to write others for flute and cor anglais. The Bassoon Sonata, Op. 168, was the last of the three to be written, completed in June 1921 and dedicated to Léon Letellier, first bassoon of the Paris Opéra and the Société des concerts. Its three movements are a fluid and lyrical Allegro moderato, a delectable (and technically challenging) scherzo marked Allegro scherzando, and a final movement which begins with an expansive Molto adagio before a brief energetic section which brings the work to an energetic close.
Les odeurs de Paris, probably composed in 1870 and subtitled a ‘grandemarche’, is another delightfully daft piece, intended to evoke the smells of Paris with a ‘children’s orchestra’, including toy instruments – bird whistles, flageolets and ratchets – alongside piano, strings, trumpet and harp. Originally the score also called for ‘pistols’, but Saint-Saëns, probably wisely, deleted them.
Nigel Simeone
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, L’assassinat du duc de guise
Composed in 1908, L’assassinat du duc de Guise was the first original film score by a major composer. The film was written by Henri Lavedan and directed by Charles le Bardy and André Calmettes; it was first shown by Le Film d’Art at the Salle Charras at 4 rue Charras, Paris, on 16 November 1908. Saint-Saëns had already left the city to spend the winter in Las Palmas and it was his pupil Fernand Leborne who conducted the performance. As for how Saint-Saëns went about writing the score, his first biographer Jean Bonnerot wrote in 1922 that it was composed ‘scene by scene, in front of the screen’.
Nigel Simeone
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Carnival of the Animals
As well as being a prolific and extremely successful composer, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a brilliant piano virtuoso and a hugely respected teacher whose pupils included Fauré and André Messager. Both of them recalled his gifts as a musical humourist: he would often lighten the serious mood of lessons with pastiches and caricatures. This tendency found its fullest expression in Le carnaval des animaux, now one of Saint-Saëns’s most famous pieces, but originally conceived as a private entertainment. A masterly parody (lampooning, among others, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Saint-Saëns’s own Danse macabre), it was written for a Shrove Tuesday concert on 9 March 1886 given at the home of the cellist Charles-Joseph Lebouc, with Saint-Saëns and Louis Diémer as the pianists and Paul Taffanel as the flautist. Often rather severe and earnest in public, Saint-Saëns wanted to be known as a composer of serious pieces, so he was uncertain how a wider audience might react to his ‘grand zoological fantasy’, and apart from The Swan he did not allow any of Carnaval to be published during his lifetime. Performances were usually given among friends: two weeks after the premiere, it was played by the chamber music society called ‘La Trompette’ (for which Saint-Saëns had written his Septet), and on 2 April 1886 it was given at the salon of Pauline Viardot, by special request of Franz Liszt, on what turned out to be his last visit to Paris.
SAINT-SAËNS Morceau de concert for horn and piano (9’) SAINT-SAËNS Bassoon Sonata (12’) SAINT-SAËNS The Carnival of the Animals (22’)
No interval
For this ‘Relaxed’ concert featuring ‘The Carnival of the Animals’, doors will be left open, lights raised, a break-out space provided, and there will be less emphasis on the audience being quiet during the performance. People with an Autism Spectrum, sensory or communication disorder or learning disability, those with age-related impairments and parents/carers with babies are all especially welcome.
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Morceau de concert for horn and piano
Originally called Fantaisie, the Morceau de concert was composed in October 1887 and a version with orchestral accompaniment quickly followed. It was dedicated to Henri Chaussier, inventor of a new type of valve horn (known as the ‘Cor Chaussier’), the specific instrument for which Saint-Saëns wrote this piece. It is in one continuous movement, divided into three distinct sections: a vigorous Allegro moderato in F minor gives way to a lyrical Adagio in A flat major followed by the concluding Allegro non troppo, which quickly moves from F minor to F major and a brilliant conclusion.
Nigel Simeone
SAINT-SAËNS Camille, Bassoon Sonata
In spite of embracing the latest technology with his pioneering film score, Saint-Saëns never came to terms with more progressive musical trends as he grew older. He could find ‘no style, logic or common sense’ in Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and was appalled by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (‘If that’s music, I’m a baboon’, he declared). Increasingly resistant to modernism, and viewed as something of a musical dinosaur, he turned instead to strict classical forms and traditional harmony, but always with beautifully-crafted results. In the last year of his life, Saint-Saëns wrote three sonatas scored for what he described to a friend as ‘rarely considered instruments’: oboe, clarinet and bassoon – and he had plans to write others for flute and cor anglais. The Bassoon Sonata, Op. 168, was the last of the three to be written, completed in June 1921 and dedicated to Léon Letellier, first bassoon of the Paris Opéra and the Société des concerts. Its three movements are a fluid and lyrical Allegro moderato, a delectable (and technically challenging) scherzo marked Allegro scherzando, and a final movement which begins with an expansive Molto adagio before a brief energetic section which brings the work to an energetic close.
As well as being a prolific and extremely successful composer, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a brilliant piano virtuoso and a hugely respected teacher whose pupils included Fauré and André Messager. Both of them recalled his gifts as a musical humourist: he would often lighten the serious mood of lessons with pastiches and caricatures. This tendency found its fullest expression in Le carnaval des animaux, now one of Saint-Saëns’s most famous pieces, but originally conceived as a private entertainment. A masterly parody (lampooning, among others, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Saint-Saëns’s own Danse macabre), it was written for a Shrove Tuesday concert on 9 March 1886 given at the home of the cellist Charles-Joseph Lebouc, with Saint-Saëns and Louis Diémer as the pianists and Paul Taffanel as the flautist. Often rather severe and earnest in public, Saint-Saëns wanted to be known as a composer of serious pieces, so he was uncertain how a wider audience might react to his ‘grand zoological fantasy’, and apart from The Swan he did not allow any of Carnaval to be published during his lifetime. Performances were usually given among friends: two weeks after the premiere, it was played by the chamber music society called ‘La Trompette’ (for which Saint-Saëns had written his Septet), and on 2 April 1886 it was given at the salon of Pauline Viardot, by special request of Franz Liszt, on what turned out to be his last visit to Paris.
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