June 27, 2009: "Golden years" of French masters

"French Masters' Golden Years" was the title of the program cellist Sarah Hong prepared for her recital in the Old First Concerts series, at the Old First Church, last night.  Those "golden years" basically covered the first two decades of the twentieth century, thus fitting very comfortably into that period of French history captured in Marcel Proust's cycle of seven novels, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.  The "masters" represented by the recital were (in the chronological order of the compositions performed) Ernest Chausson, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré (also represented by an encore).

For Proust the violin played a pivotal role in the unfolding of his plot, particularly in the form of a violin sonata by the fictional composer Vinteuil.  However, there are many ways in which the richer and darker character of the cello is more suitable to Proust's settings that embody both the elegance and the decadence of his age.  Proust dealt with these contrasting characteristics with abundant irony, and that sense of irony is very much present in Debussy's 1915 cello sonata.  Debussy had considered titling this sonata "Pierrot fâché avec la lune" [Pierrot annoyed with the moon];  and the program notes (which did not get this title quite right) speculated that the work may have been inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, composed three years earlier.  Debussy certainly matches Schoenberg irony for irony and does so without ever leaving the sphere of conventional tonality.  Thus, it could be that Debussy was also "defending the old ways," leading me to suggest on my blog that a better title for the work might have been "Debussy fâché avec Schoenberg!"

This sonata was the first of three chamber music sonatas that Debussy composed near the end of his life.  Two years later, Fauré, now in his seventies, composed the first of two of his own cello sonatas (Opus 109).  When the San Francisco Symphony performed the music of both of these composers on the same program last April, I described Fauré "as an impressionist in contrast with a more fauvist Debussy."  From this point of view, Fauré's sonata begins with what sounds like a deliberate venture into fauvism (provoked by Debussy's earlier sonata?), while the remaining two movements almost seem to reconcile the opposing styles.  None of Debussy's fâcherie is present, however, nor is there any edge of irony.  Rather, there may have been a few hints of nostalgic reflection.  Some of that reflection may have been reinforced by the decision to perform a transcription (probably by Pablo Casals) of one of his early songs, "Après un Rêve," Opus 7, Number 1, as an encore.

Chronologically, Ravel's A minor piano trio predates both of these sonatas.  Indeed, it was completed in September of 1914;  and Ravel had apparently worked quickly to finish the work in order to be available to enlist in the army.  (World War I had broken out in August.)  The trio is dedicated to André Gedalge, who was not only Ravel's counterpoint teacher but also the author of a text that is still accepted as a leading authority on the composition of fugue.  That dedication is most manifest in the passacaglia of the third movement, which weaves material from earlier movements into its successive elaborations on an eight-bar bass line.

For the performance of this trio, Hong and her accompanist, Makiko Ooka, were joined by violinist Fumino Ando.  They found an excellent balance between Ravel's technical demands and the high level of expressiveness in each of his four movements (as Hong had done in her performances of the two sonatas).  For all the haste of his effort, the resulting trio is Ravel at his most stimulating;  and the energy of the three performers added exhilaration to the stimulation.  The one "quiet moment" of the evening came when Hong chose to perform Chausson's Opus 39 "pièce," very much a reflection on the short ternary-form compositions of nineteenth-century German chamber music.  It was composed in 1899, the year of Chausson's death and is very much a farewell to nineteenth-century values as those "golden years" of the rest of Hong's program were about to begin.  If the best concert programs are the ones that introduce us to music history without being pedantic, then last night's recital was definitely one of those programs.