Claude Debussy, musicien Francais
Guest post from Accordo guest pianist Benjamin Hochman
Each of Debussy’s Six Sonates pour divers instruments, only three of which he completed before his death, were signed "Claude Debussy, musicien Francais." While the immediate catalyst for Debussy’s patriotism was the tragedy of World War I, in a larger sense Debussy’s declaration of himself as French reflects his deep connection to a grand cultural and artistic tradition, stretching back to Rameau and Couperin and later inspiring Messiaen, Dutilleux, and Boulez.
That signature also helps explain why for this Accordo concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s birth, we are performing the music of not one, but three giants of French music, along with a contrasting iconoclastic Czech composer who has some important points of similarity with his French colleagues. For the purposes of this program, we can think of Janáček as the not-too-distant cousin, Ravel as the brother, Fauré as the uncle and Debussy as the birthday boy himself.
Since I frequently perform the music of the German masters (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Berg, etc.) I am particularly excited to participate in an entire program devoted to the music of several non-German masters!
Generally speaking, the German musical tradition is characterized by a preoccupation with and mastery of structure. This focus on structure allows for thematic development to come to the fore. Late period Beethoven is a good example: the extreme economy of musical material, which is then developed and transformed in profoundly creative and skillful ways, points to a philosophical interest in transcendence. The French musical tradition, on the other hand, while by no means devoid of structure or transcendence, is interested primarily in other things: color, timbre, gesture, fluid forms, a sensual approach to music, that elusive “je ne sais quoi.”
Debussy embodies that French sensibility in his masterful Preludes for piano, of which we will hear three selections in this concert. Here, Debussy assigns evocative, mysterious, sometimes cryptic or ambiguous titles to each short piece, although he strictly instructed his publishers to place the titles at the end of the piece rather than the beginning, so that performer and listener alike will not fall into that facile trap of assuming the link between words and music. And yet with a title like “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir” (“Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air”) one can not help but be influenced by the words. Luckily, the music is as magnificent as the words that inspired this particular prelude, in this case Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Harmonies du soir.” “Des pas sur la neige” (“Footsteps in the snow”) is a poignantly sad piece that evokes the image of a frozen landscape. “Les collines d’Anacapri” (“The hills of Anacapri”) is a joyfully exuberant piece inspired by an Italian island off the coast of Napoli. In all three works, the compositional imagination, colorful sonorities, and luscious pianistic textures make these true masterpieces.
Janáček exists in a category all of his own. He has a unique compositional voice that synthesizes musical modernism, Moravian folk music, and the rhythms of the Czech language. He was a defiant and uncompromising man with a tempestuous personal life. Late in life, he fell desperately in love with Kamila Stosslova, a married woman almost 40 years his junior, and wrote her nearly 700 letters. Written in 1914, a few years before he first met Stosslova, the Sonata for violin and piano shows the influence of the great tensions in Europe at the start of World War I. Like much of Janáček’s music, the work conveys a sharp emotional and psychological acuity, and some powerfully raw emotions. The opening movement is urgently dramatic, the second movement is a tender Ballade, the third is a folk inspired scherzo and the last movement is the emotional culmination of the work: it features two contrasting elements that battle throughout the movement, reaching a frenzy and dissipating into exhaustion and silence. I feel that the connection of this piece to Debussy and the French style is in the colorful harmonic language and original use of instrumental timbre.
Ravel’s sole String Quartet was written in 1903 when the composer was 28, and was dedicated to his teacher, Gabriel Fauré. It’s a beautiful work, original and distinctly Ravel in its perfectly crafted sonorities and textures, its range of emotions, beautiful melodies, and rich harmonic language. Debussy loved this work, writing Ravel: “In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet.” On a personal note, when I was about 15, I happened to come across a recording of the Quartetto Italiano playing this piece and listened to it over and over—I am looking forward to hearing the amazing musicians of Accordo play it!
Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C minor was written in 1879 and revised in 1883. It was a tumultuous time in his life: after courting Marieanne Viardot for several years, he finally got engaged to her, only to see her break off the engagement four months later. The quartet is suitably stormy and dark. It is in some ways the most “Germanic” of the pieces on our program in the sense that it uses the traditional four-movement structure, with large-scale first and last movements in sonata form, a scherzo, and a slow movement. The luxurious sound of the instrumental writing is almost Brahmsian at times but the subtle harmonic language and kaleidoscopic changes in color are unique to Fauré. I am particularly fond of the slow movement: it reminds me of Fauré’s Après un reve, a beautiful song in the same key.
Programs like this one clearly show us the degree to which composers are influenced by one another, inspire each other, and develop a personal style which exists in relation to others. That’s what makes it so interesting and rewarding for us, the performers, and we hope you, our listeners, will feel this way too.
-Benjamin Hochman
Photo credit: J. Henry Fair
