Program Notes
Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music
Saturday, March 6, 2004

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

   Sonata no. 1 in D minor, for violin and piano, op. 75 (composed 1855)
        Allegro agitato
        Adagio
        Allegretto moderato
        Allegro molto

           Chee-Yun, violin
            Wendy Chen, piano

Considering how prolific a composer Camille Saint-Saëns was in virtually every musical genre and how popular several of his works have been (the opera Samson et Dalila, the symphonic poem Danse Macabre, the "Organ" Symphony, the "zoological fantasy" Le Carnaval des Animaux, and the Cello Concerto in A minor, to name a few), it is surprising how little else of his output is heard nowadays.  Especially with the "new consonance" of our own time, one might expect a revival of interest in this neo-classic composer, pianist, and organist, whose music tends to be both refined and restrained.

Born in Paris, Saint-Saëns was composing by the age of six and entered the Paris Conservatoire at thirteen.  Twice he competed for the prestigious Prix de Rome, without success:  first in 1852, when his youth helped defeat him; again in 1864, when he was considered too well-known to benefit from the prize.  A classicist in a romantic age, Saint-Saëns lived to hear the musical revolution of the early 20th century, though his own music never acknowledged modernism of any stripe.

Chamber music constitutes a sizeable chunk of his oeuvre, including two string quartets, a piano quartet, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and about two dozen works for piano and one other instrument.  Within this final category are two sonatas, two elegies, and a few other miscellaneous pieces for violin and piano.

Saint Saëns wrote his Sonata no. 1 in D minor, for violin and piano, op. 75 in 1885.  Legend has it that novelist Marcel Proust used this sonata as the rough model for the fictional sonata by Vinteuil that served as the “national anthem” of Swann’s love for Odette in the monumental Remembrance of Things Past.  The very real Saint-Saëns Sonata no. 1, however, was dedicated to the Belgian violinist Martin Marsick, the composer’s friend and frequent performing partner.  The sonata employs a favorite Saint-Saëns device, that of pairing the first two and the last two movements, just as he would do most famously a year later in the “Organ” Symphony.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

   Waldesruhe, op. 68, no. 5 (composed 1883-1884)

    Slavonic Dance in E minor, op. 72, no. 2 (composed 1886)
        Allegretto scherzando

    Slavonic Dance in C major, op. 46, no. 1 (composed 1878)
        Presto

               Wendy Chen, piano
               Charles Wadsworth, piano

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Antonín Dvořák was a pianist who neither performed widely nor wrote many large-scale works for his own instrument. Rather, when he wrote for the piano, he tended to concentrate on small character sketches and folk-influences dance pieces. All three of these works, written for piano, four hands, are probably better known in arrangements for other forces.

Waldesruhe, op. 68, no. 5 (“Silent Woods”) is from the set of six tone pictures, Ze žumavy (“From the Bohemian Forest”), composed in late 1883 and early 1884. As part of Dvořák’s preparations for coming to the United States in 1892, he made a small Czech farewell tour as a pianist with the violinist Ferdinand Lachner and cellist Hanuë Wihan. Lacking an appropriate showcase for the cellist, Dvořák arranged his Waldesruhe for cello and piano, premiering it on January 3, 1892. Later still, he would create a version for cello and orchestra. Clearly, he had a special affection for this work. A quiet opening theme interacts subtly with a fragmentary countertheme. Tensions arise in the middle section with a hunting-horn-like motif, followed by a return to the calm of the opening.

Dvořák’s first set of Slavonic Dances, op. 46 can claim Johannes Brahms as their godfather. In 1874, Dvořák began to apply regularly for the Austrian State Stipendium, designed to help poor, young artists. Over the next few years he received awards five times. Although the monetary encouragement was important, the greater lasting effect was to bring Dvořák to the attention of several influential authorities who would come to be some of his greatest champions, including Brahms and the influential critic Eduard Hanslick. Impressed by what he saw of Dvořák’s emerging talent, Brahms wrote in late 1877 to Fritz Simrock, his own publisher, recommending that he consider some of Dvořák’s works for publication. Simrock was skeptical at first, preferring to gauge public reaction before committing to the career of this unknown Bohemian.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

   Trio in B-flat, for clarinet, cello, and piano, op. 11 (composed 1797)
        Allegro
        Adagio
        Tema:  Pria ch’io L’impegno (Allegretto)

            Todd Palmer, clarinet
            Andrés Díaz, cello
            Wendy Chen, piano

By the time Beethoven wrote his Trio, op. 11, Vienna knew him as both an ambitious, rising composer and a piano virtuoso celebrated for his improvisational abilities.  It was at the first performance of the trio, in the home of his friend and disciple Count Ferdinand Ries, that Beethoven was challenged by a rival pianist and composer of the day, Daniel Steibelt (1765-1823).  Steibelt had listened disdainfully to the trio, in which the piano looms prominently but not overwhelmingly, and figured that Beethoven was no threat.

Eight days later, the two met at the Count’s home.  Following a performance of a quintet of his, Steibelt began to improvise on the same theme that forms the basis of the finale of Beethoven’s trio.  Pria ch’io l’impegno was a currently popular tune from the opera L’Amor Marinaro (The Corsair) by Joseph Weigl (1777-1846).  Outraged, Beethoven grabbed the cello part to Steibelt’s quintet, set it upside-down on the piano’s music stand, and began to pound out one of its themes with a single finger.  His furious improvisations drove Steibelt from the room and the two remained bitter adversaries until their deaths.

That same Weigl tune gave rise to the trio’s occasional nickname, the Gassenhauer or Street Song trio.  It was variations on that tune that clarinetist Josef Beer (1744-1811) had requested from Beethoven in the first place.  Having succumbed to popular opinion by appropriating this hit to further his career, Beethoven always remained unsatisfied with that movement, though he never penned a substitute.  Another sign of his ambition was the work’s dedication to Mozart’s former patron, Countess Maria Wilhelmine von Thun, mother of his own friend and patron, Prince Lichnowsky.

A striking unison statement of the first theme opens the Allegro con brio (4/4); the second theme is introduced by a startling key change.  Continuing the tonal adventure, the development begins with the second rather than the first theme.  Con espressione is the marking of the Adagio (3/4), headed by the singing cello, then the clarinet.  The minor-mode midsection, dominated by the piano, is followed by a varied repeat of the first part.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

   Première rapsodie, for clarinet and piano (composed 1909-1910)

        Todd Palmer, clarinet
        Charles Wadsworth, piano

Few composers published as many works specifically labeled “first” without following them up with a “second” as did Claude Debussy.  That happened in no fewer than four cases:  his 1879 Première trio, for piano and strings; his 1883 Première suite, for orchestra; his 1893 Première quatuor (the String Quartet, op. 10); and the present work, his Première rapsodie, for clarinet and piano, written during December 1909 and January 1910.  Actually, there IS another “Rapsodie,” written under considerable duress, for saxophone and piano, but it dates from 1903-1905.

As a member of the Supreme Council of the Music Section of the Paris Conservatoire, Debussy had to compose two pieces for the performance exams of wind instrument students.  During December 1909 and January 1910, he wrote two brief clarinet and piano pieces:  The main test piece he entitled the Première rapsodie, and the sight-reading exercise he would later publish as Petite pièce.  The former was dedicated to his fellow faculty member, the clarinet professor Prosper Charles Mimart (“with feelings of sympathy”).  It earned a special place in the composer’s affections.  “Surely,” he once wrote, “this piece is one of the most pleasing I have ever written.”  So much did he like it that he orchestrated the piano part in 1911.

The Première rapsodie exploits the entire range of the clarinet in a virtuoso but hardly frivolous manner.  In one long movement, the work begins with a section marked Rêveusement lent (dreamily slow), which alternates with more lively scherzando passages.  Changing tempos and a variety of performance techniques pepper this clarinet showcase.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

   Trio no. 1 in D minor, for violin, cello, and piano, op. 49 (composed 1839)
        Molto allegro e agitato
        Andante con molto tranquillo
        Scherzo:  Leggiero e vivace
        Finale:  Allegro assai appassionato           

            Chee-Yun, violin
            Andrés Díaz, cello
            Wendy Chen, piano

His friend Robert Schumann called Felix Mendelssohn "the Mozart of the 19th century," not least because of the astounding number of works he produced during his short lifetime:  volumes of works for piano and for organ; five symphonies; monumental choral pieces; overtures and incidental music; songs and part-songs; and no fewer than two dozen chamber works.  Throughout Europe, Mendelssohn was in demand as an organist, pianist, conductor, and composer, spending his last decade as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.  There he championed neglected works of the previous century, premiered his own compositions and those of his contemporaries, and tried to raise the standards of both orchestral performance and public taste.

Never an innovator, Mendelssohn strove to reconcile the classical heritage of the 18th century with the romantic tenor of his own.  He spent a good deal of 1839 working on his First Piano Trio, beginning as early as February and still revising it well into September.  In fact, even after its publication the text year, he continued to tinker with it, so much so that a second version had to be brought out.

The cello’s melancholy first theme opens the Molto allegro e agitato and is expanded upon by the violin, highlighted by lovely countermelodies.  The second theme, also introduced by the cello, lacks the contrast usually found in second themes.  The boundary between exposition and development is obscured by the early return of the first theme, and the recap is notable for the extensive thematic reworking that amounts to a second development before the coda.

Although the slow movement is in ABA form and in the lyrical spirit of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, there is again less contrast between the sections than one might expect.  The minor-mode mid-section with its triplet accompaniment gives way to a newly ornamented return of the opening theme.  Staccato piano introduces the Scherzo:  Leggiero e vivace (“light and lively”), transporting listeners to the elfin and evanescent world for which Mendelssohn is renowned.  A gypsy-like dance dominates the rondo-form finale, where the piano presents nearly all the new ideas save for the violin and cello cantabile melody in the middle.

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.  He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Alive:  Music, Art, and Culture in Columbus (http://www.columbusalive.com).

| Back to Top | Back to Programs | CCMS Home |