Anniversary Programme IV

Melancholy and yearning for the eternal
A listener not knowing any better might think that the French composer Ernest Chausson had set out to breathe new life into the time-honoured concerto grosso of the Baroque era with his ambitiously conceived Concerto, which he had written for Eugène Ysaÿe. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth; moreover, one must not be misled by the title “Sicilienne,” given to the second movement. Never in his life did Chausson entrust a single neoclassical note to the page. All of his music seems to strike a balance between tragedy and a yearning for the eternal (a latent Wagnerian influence). Characteristic even of the seemingly upbeat movements is an undercurrent of melancholy, which when contrasted with all of the Latin clarté of his music, is often further emphasised by Tristanesque harmonies and-as is heard in the opening movement of the Concerto-by sequence-like motifs, which are reminiscent of Der Ring des Nibelungen. The better acquainted one becomes with Chausson’s music, the more one is convinced that, in actuality, Chausson wrote only one indivisible and “unattainable” work, of which the separate compositions constitute movements, functioning as paths which lead back to the whole. Take, for instance, the first movement of the Concerto, in which elements from the Symphony in B-flat mysteriously emerge-sometimes literally. This is unsurprising, as both works were written between 1889 and 1891 (and the finale in 1893). In other words, one can certainly speak of a “synergetic” relationship between the two, to state it in modern terms.

Reference
Another matter altogether is the slow movement, which can be characterised as one of Chausson’s most disconsolate inspirations. The important role that chromaticism plays is expressed in the oscillating theme which is first heard in the piano part during the opening and which figures prominently throughout what one could rightly call a nerve-racking development; occasionally, a highly peculiar reference (I will not comment on whether this is coincidental or not, but it is certainly symbolic) to one of Carlo Gesualdo di Venosa’s madrigals is heard-namely, his sorrowful Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (“I die, alas, in my grief”) from the sixth book. Another characteristic of his Concerto is Chausson’s free use of César Franck’s so-called cyclic principle, which is witnessed in the free recapitulation of the second theme of the third movement in the richly varied finale. The combination heard on this programme with the version that was discovered in 1996, which is scored for the same group of instruments as the Poème (1896)-originally a concerto for violin and orchestra-is, of course, extremely significant. Incidentally, an arrangement of this work for violin and piano also exists, which means that a total of three editions of the Poème are in circulation, of which the symphonic version is one of Chausson’s most frequently performed works. Although the Poème is based on a short, dramatic love story by Turgenev, namely his Le chant de l’amour triomphant, the story is merely a pretext for a large-scale, well-balanced “Lied ohne Worte,” in which melancholy, euphoria and ecstasy vie for the spotlight.

Act of rebellion
When the jury of the once prestigious Prix de Rome was presented with the first movement of Ravel’s String Quartet, which dates from 1902/1903, they found it too inaccessible because of its complexity. This in itself was reason enough for a flat-out rejection. Thanks to Debussy, who clearly recognised the genius his younger colleague possessed, the work emerged from the battlefield intact, as Ravel was on the verge of rewriting the quartet. Another point of contention was the classical nature of the piece, which, in contrast to the ensuing period when neoclassicism reigned supreme, was viewed unfavourably and interpreted as an act of rebellion. Actually, the jury were not entirely wrong in their observation in the sense that, although one cannot qualify Ravel’s String Quartet stylistically as “classical,” the clear-cut delineation of various themes and motifs does lend itself to such a description. Add to this that during the atmospheric and enchanting third movement, an almost literal foreshadowing of one of Ravel’s least classical scores is heard, his Daphnis et Chloë, and it is clear that we must take the label “classical” with a few grains of salt. Incidentally, Ravel’s unmistakable connection to Franck and Chausson is his use of the cyclic design. This is expressed quite impressively in the effervescent last movement, in which the principal themes of the first and third movements are placed in an unexpected new light and are ingeniously interwoven.

Maarten Brandt