Programme Notes

Nicola Matteis c. 1650- c. 1714.
Passagio Rotto

Very little is known about Matteis’ early life other than he was probably born in Naples around 1650 and came to England at the beginning of 1670.

His fame gradually grew as a virtuoso violinist and he was credited as changing the English taste for violin playing from the French style, elaborate and highly ornamented, to the newer more lyrical, expressive Italian style.

He published a substantial amount of music, primarily instrumental, under the title ‘Ayres for the violin’ as well as a few songs.
His compositions have been described as ‘ Lively, well -crafted and expressive’.
He gave precise instructions in the prefaces to his published music, knowing that many of his customers would be amateurs, including bowing, explanation of ornaments and tempo markings.
These have proved to be a valuable resource to scholars in the reconstruction of the performance practice of the time.

He married a wealthy widow in 1700, with whom he had a son also called Nicola, and in 1714 bought a manor in Norfolk in an attempt to escape the demands of living in London.
He lived a life of luxury, but according to the contemporary diarist Roger North, ‘ an excess of pleasures threw him into a dropsyes, and so he became poor. And dyed miserable’!

Passagio Rotto ( broken passages) comes from The Second Part of Ayres for the Violin.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750
Sonata for violin and continuo in E minor BWV 1023
I. ( no tempo indication) II. Adagio ma non tanto III. Allemande IV. Gigue

There are several works attributed to Bach for violin and continuo ( not to be confused with the Sonatas for solo violin!) but only two, the ones in G major and the one in E minor performed here are confirmed to be by him.
It is not certain who he wrote them for, either for himself, an accomplished violinist, or for his friend Johann Georg Pisendel, the leading violinist of Central Germany at the time.
The E minor Sonata was thought to be written sometime between 1714-17, but was only first published in 1867!
It opens with a flurry of semiquavers on the violin, and after a series of lively figurations, this short movement leads straight into the poignant, lilting Adagio.
An energetic Allemande is followed by a Gigue, featuring some syncopated rhythms, giving the movement an almost jazzy, swinging feel at times, and despite the minor key, a happy-go-lucky mood!

Johann Paul von Westhoff 1656-1705
Sonata for violin and continuo in A major La Guerra.
I. Adagio con una dolce maniera – Allegro II. Tremulo Adagio III. Allegro ovvero un poco presto IV. Adagio V. Aria ( Adagio assai) VI. La Guerra cosi nominata di sua maestà VII. Aria ( Tutto Adagio) VIII. Vivace IX. Gigue.

Westhoff was born in Dresden. He became a pupil of Heinrich Schutz and in 1674 joined the Dresden Hofkapelle as musician and composer, where he remained a member for more than 20 years. During this period he travelled throughout Europe, visiting Hungary, Italy, France, Holland and Austria as one of the most famous violinists of his time and composed some of the earliest known music for solo violin.
He left Dresden in 1697 and after briefly teaching contemporary languages at Wittenberg University, in 1699 became chamber secretary, musician and teacher of French and Italian at the Weimar Court.
In Weimar he met JS Bach, who was a colleague, and proved a considerable influence on the latter composer. He died in Weimar in April 1705.

His surviving music includes seven works for violin and basso continuo and seven for solo violin, all published in his lifetime.
His Suite for Solo Violin of 1683 is the earliest known multi-movement piece for solo violin and together with his Six Partitas were a forerunner of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonata for violin and continuo in C minor BWV 1024
I. Adagio II. Presto III. Affetuoso IV. Vivace

There is some doubt as to whether this was written by Bach or more probably by J G Pisendel. It was first published in 1867.
The opening Adagio features some poignant passage work for the violin. The Presto includes a striking descending sequence and a dramatic final cadence. A deeply expressive Affetuoso is followed by a Vivace, with notable moments where the violin and continuo play short phrases in unison, brief moments of unanimity.

Programme notes by Guy Richardson.

Bohuslav Martinů 1890-1959

Oboe Quartet H 315 Written in 1947

Moderato poco allegro

Adagio, Andante poco Moderato – poco Allegro

Martinů was a Czechoslovakian composer who was for a time a student at the Prague Conservatory. Composition was more important to him than his violin studies and he did not take to the rigours of the general curriculum and was eventually dismissed for “ incorrigible negligence” ! In the 1930s having moved to Paris Martinů wrote in the Neoclassical style and was influenced strongly by Stravinsky’s angular and rhythmic sound-world. Martinů drew on his Bohemian and Moravian traditional folk melodies and has thus been compared with Prokofiev and Bartók.

Martinů and his family fled Europe for the USA in 1940 and this oboe quartet was written in New York in a period of turbulent personal life. Martinů finally returned to Europe and died in Switzerland.

The quartet is a light piece which is rarely performed. It has two short movements. Martinů’s angular and quirky instrumental writing is evident and the strong rhythmical character and close imitation of phrases between the four players is immediately clear. The oboe is not seen here as the lead or solo player but is in balance with the other instruments.

The first movement has a genial mood and uncomplicated structure. The second movement is in three sections. The opening chords set up the dance style that reflects Martinů’s Czechoslovakian origins and sound-world. The quartet is rounded off with a short allegro that culminates in a straightforward cadence.

 

Poulenc 1899-1963

Sonata for Oboe and Piano 1962

Elégie (Paisiblement, sans presser)

Scherzo (Très animé)

Déploration ( Très calme)

Francis Poulenc was born in Paris into a prosperous and well educated family. His mother taught him the piano from a young age. As a student he met Milhaud and Satie and others who encouraged him to compose. He travelled to Vienna and met Schoenberg. Composition training was not successful and Ravel could get nowhere with this most individual musician. Poulenc wrote many pieces of chamber music and much was influenced by Jazz.

Roger Nichols Poulenc’s biographer tells us that “Poulenc’s style and the French Aesthetic…are defined by their elegance, lightness of touch and humour but with the ability to move one deeply” For some commentators Poulenc’s music is seen as slight, inconsequential and not worthy of serious consideration, but Nichols’ view is more positive and understanding of a very complex personality writing music from his own conviction rather than received education and composition training.

This sonata for oboe and piano was dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev. It is from a group of three woodwind sonatas written in the last year of his life. The first movement is in three distinct sections. The Piano keeps the pulse while the oboe weaves around using its wide register in a variety of moods. The Scherzo is a lively three part movement with a slower middle area and more rhythmic outer sections. The final movement echoes the Chorale of Bach’s time 200 years earlier. This movement is melancholic and has many references to Poulenc’s own earlier music. The harmonic language of his choral pieces and Organ Concerto for example is reflected here.

Roger Nichols in The New Grove Dictionary of Music.

Sergey Prokofiev 1891-1953

Quintet Op 39 in G Minor. 1924

Tema con variazioni, Andante energico, Allegro sostenuto, ma con brio,

Adagio pesante, Allegro precipitato, ma non troppo presto, Andantino

Prokofiev was born in Ukraine. His mother was a pianist and a very strong musical influence over her only child. He was precocious and at eleven years old began to take lessons from Glier in harmony, form and orchestration. In 1905 Prokofiev joined the St Petersburg Conservatory. This was an uncertain and disruptive time as the arts suffered in the build-up to the Revolution. In 1918 Prokofiev travelled to the USA where he made a name as an opera composer, but he was dissatisfied and moved on in 1922, this time to Paris to join his mother who was already there. He married a singer and settled into a family life with their two sons. At this time there were no plans for the family to return to Russia.

This Quintet is closely related to Prokofiev’s ballet Trapèze and is based on life in the circus. It reflects Prokofiev’s characteristically ironic and unconventional musical world. The six movements demonstrate spikey angular lines and contrasting smoother melodies. It is playful and energetic and the circus is not far away. In the first movement the two contrasting variations are formed from the oboe’s opening theme. The second movement features the double bass whose theme is taken up by the other instruments in turn. The third movement evokes the circus as the uneven rhythmical patterns in 5/4 time threaten to destabilise the listeners. The original ballet dancers found this particularly challenging too ! The Adagio pesante has a drone played by the double bass. This underpins a somewhat eerie sound above with the oboe and violin playing near the bridge. The fifth movement is as its title suggests very energetic and there are strong accents, rushing scales and pizzicato attacks. Finally a minuet and trio with instruments working in pairs. After the trio the minuet returns and the whole piece is brought to its end with a short dissonant passage and a rush to the finish which is led by the viola and double bass. Circus life indeed !

Programme notes by Helen Simpson.

 

Josef Haydn (1732-1809) String Quartet in B♭ Op 76 no 4 (1797)

Allegro con spirito
Adagio
Menuetto: Allegro
Finale: Allegro, ma non troppo

In 1795 Haydn returned from his spectacularly successful visits to England to the relatively light duties prescribed by the new Esterházy Prince Nikolaus II.  Nikolaus had abandoned his father’s palace at Esterházy, sacking its extensive musical establishment, and divided his time between Eisenstadt and Vienna.  Haydn was kept on, but his main duty was just to write a Mass for the Princess’s name day. He was free to accept other commissions.

One such commission came from Count Joseph Erdödy, the Hungarian Court Chancellor.   Although Erdödy’s father had employed an orchestra to play in their family’s three palaces, the son, on inheriting the title in 1789 responded both to contemporary taste and financial stringency by replacing the orchestra with a string quartet.  In 1796 he placed a generous commission with Haydn for six quartets.   The resulting ‘Erdödy’ quartets are a triumph, perhaps the pinnacle of Haydn’s long quartet-writing career.

The fourth of the set, nicknamed ‘The Sunrise’, dawns gently in a simple Bb chord from the three lower strings. The first violin’s theme cautiously rises, with no suggestion of the movement’s Allegro con spirito marking.  After 20-odd bars light floods in, somewhat reminiscent of the opening of ‘The Creation’ on which Haydn was working at the time, and the spirit is freed in dancing semiquavers.  The opening chord returns in F but now with the theme in the cello curving down, rather than rising.  The movement develops the contrast between these ideas.

The Adagio is one of Haydn’s most profound.  Its pausing, hesitantly rising opening recalls, in slow-motion, the start of the first movement.  The first violin’s rapt meditation is intensified by closely overlapping entries of this opening phrase.  The Menuetto is rustic rather than courtly, and its lines again recall the gentle rise of the opening sunrise.  The Trio is linked through from the Menuetto by a held chord on the cello and viola, again recalling the work’s opening.

The last movement’s structure starts with alternating major-minor episodes, but after the reprise of the major section Haydn puts his foot on the accelerator, Più allegro,  Più presto, an exhilarating race to the finish.

Schulhoff 1894 – 1942

Five Pieces for String Quartet

1.Alla Viennese
2.Alla Serenata
3. Alla Gzeca
4. Alla Tango Milonga
5. Alla Tarantella.

Dedicated to Darius Milhaud.

Ervin Schulhoff was born in Prague and became a composer and pianist. Among his early teachers were Reger and Debussy, before he moved to Germany and established himself in the company of Dadaist practitioners such as Grosz and Klee, who were working in other art forms. Back in Prague Schulhoff worked in the Prague Theatre Jazz Orchestra as the resident pianist. By the mid 1930s as a Communist and with Soviet citizenship and Jewish ethnicity Schulhoff was in danger. He was taken to the internment camp at Wülzburg and he died there, from Tuberculosis in 1942.

Schulhoff’s music demonstrates the growing movement in Europe known as the New Objectivity. Listeners are given a stark representation of reality and not infrequently made to feel uncomfortable and disturbed as a result. The influences from working with jazz musicians and experimenters with sound machines and home-made instruments show in some of Schulhoff’s compositions and these have been labelled “functionalist music”.

A comment made in 1924 at the first performance about Five Pieces for String Quartet praised the music’s human and technical worth but at the same time Schulhoff’s ability not to take himself too seriously. This is evident in today’s performance 100 years later.

The five short movements have titles of well known dances and they look back towards the Baroque dance suites. These were character pieces written for entertainment and which did not require deep concentration. Schulhoff’s pieces have an edginess and nervy energy which belies their titles and assumed moods. Here, there is evidence that Schulhoff developed compositionally far beyond what he had been taught and his use of the four stringed instruments is closer to that of Bartók than Reger or Debussy, his early teachers.

The Serenata shows the influence of drones in folk traditions and they have a rhythmic function here. Bartók’s influence is clear in the Czeca movement. The Tango is relatively relaxed with longer melodic lines and a more open texture. This is more sensual as expected. There are no clichés though and it is less catchy than some of Schulhoff’s jazz Piano pieces. The Tarantella is derived from the Italian word Tarantole, the name for the Tarantula spider. The energy here is redolent of the creature indeed ! The Tarantella dance of the spider, from Puglia Southern Italy, describes the effect of the bite of the Tarantula spider. The victim dances themselves into a frenzy and then collapses with exhaustion. Musical accompaniment and incitement is given by Mandolines, Guitars and Tambourines playing furiously.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) String Quartet in D min D.810 (Death & the Maiden) (1824)

Allegro
Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Presto 

Though composed in the same year as the A-minor “Rosamunde” quartet, the opening four bars of this D minor quartet set it in a different world from Rosamunde’s understated charms.  The hammered out fortissimo triplet figure (illustrated) demands our serious attention, but is immediately transformed into an almost apologetically tender pianissimo phrase (illustrated).  After a pause, the tension mounts, driven by the triplets, to a reinforced version of the opening.  This emotional roller-coaster continues throughout the movement.  The triplets sometimes give way to the dotted rhythm of a yearning tune (illustrated) that Jack Westrup attributes to Schubert’s admiration for Rossini;  this theme in turn gets transformed into more serious matter against running semiquavers.  The emotional intensity and tightness of construction of the movement recall the later Beethoven but it was written the year before the first of Beethoven’s late quartets.  The repeated notes of the opening bars and their rhythm are echoed in the themes of the other three movements.

The theme for the variations of the G minor Andante con moto comes from Death’s contribution to a short Schubert song of 1817, inviting a terrified young girl to sleep safely in his arms.  The quartet version is lighter: a fourth higher and con moto.  The  calm of the first two variations is shattered by the brutal dactyls (–˅˅) of the third, in a more rapid version of the rhythm of the theme; calm returns only to be broken again by the long crescendo of the repeat of the fifth variation to yet more terrifying dactyls.  The terror subsides to a serene end and a Schubert-hallmark switch to the major.

The fiercely syncopated energy of the Scherzo contrasts with a  tranquil Trio, whose D-major theme (illustrated) is  related to the work’s opening.  The Scherzo leads to the tarantella-form Presto finale.  The tarantella folk-dance hails from Taranto in southern Italy: a courting couple dance encircled by others as the music gets faster and faster.  Taranto independently gave its name to the tarantula spider, the effects of whose allegedly serious bite could, it was thought, be ameliorated by wild dancing.  Pepys records tales of itinerant fiddlers cashing in on this belief especially during the harvest when bites were more frequent.  It is quite possible that Schubert intends the allusion to cheating death, but either way this energetic dance with its prestissimo ending provides a rousing climax to the quartet.

Programme notes by Chris Darwin (Haydn and Schubert) and Helen Simpson (Schulhoff).

See Chris Darwin’s Programme Notes for other works on his web page.

W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) String Quartet in G K.387 (1782)

Allegro vivace assai
Minuetto & Trio – Allegro
Andante Cantabile
Molto Allegro 

The early 1780s were a time of great change for Mozart. Continue reading 14th April 2024 – Kleio Quartet – Programme notes

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Piano Trio in A minor (1914)

Modéré
Pantoum. Assez vite
Passacaille. Très large
Final. Animé

The music of the young Maurice Ravel did not appeal to the contemporary, conservative musical taste of the Paris Conservatoire. For example, he never won the Prix de Rome; and not for want of trying – five attempts between 1900 and 1905. His last attempt (he had reached the age limit of 30) was triaged out because his fugue contained parallel fifths and the last chord contained a major 7^th. This Strictly Ballroom-style failure provoked l’affaire Ravel, with even his usually hostile critics affronted that such a distinguished composer should be so perfunctorily dismissed. After the press got their teeth into the fact that all the finalists were students of one particular jury member, the director of the Conservatoire resigned and was replaced by the reforming Fauré (nicknamed Robespierre).

Ravel’s independent spirit sought out new musical and literary genres, such as the Gamelan and the contemporary Russian music that he heard at the 1889 Paris exhibition. Around 1902 he joined Les Apaches (The Hooligans), a group of broadminded literary, musical and artistic contemporaries. The group was joined in 1909 by Stravinsky, and Ravel was commissioned by Diaghilev to write Daphnis et Chloé for the Ballets Russes. In 1913 Ravel joined Stravinsky at Clarens in Switzerland where they jointly orchestrated a piece by Mussorgsky for Diaghilev and Ravel was shown the score of the yet-to-be-performed The Rite of Spring.

When war broke out in 1914, Ravel was working on his Piano Trio in the French Basque commune of Saint-Jean-de-Luz near to his home town; he completed the work in five weeks before volunteering for military service. He was also working on a piano concerto (Zazpiak Bat) based on Basque themes, which was later abandoned, but whose main theme is identical in rhythm (though half speed) to the opening of the Trio (illustrated). The time signature is an unusual 8/8 – eight quavers in a bar rather than the more usual 4/4 (four crotchets) since the quavers in each bar are grouped 3+2+3. This rocking rhythm is a dominant feature of the movement. Notice also how the theme moves in single note steps until a downward jump of a fourth near the end. The opening themes of the other three movements are similarly constructed—in the second and fourth movements, the jump is of a fifth.

The second movement is in the form of a Scherzo and Trio but mysteriously titled Pantoum. A pantoum is a Malaysian verse form in which two themes are interlocked: the second and fourth lines of each four line stanza become the first and third of the next. Debussy had previously set to music a pantoum-structured poem by Baudelaire, but Ravel appears to be doing something more ambitious. According to Brian Newbould the alternating development of two contrasting ideas in this movement follows a pantoum structure: the skittish opening theme, and the smoother rather breathless one that follows it. Combining this construction with a Scherzo and Trio form leads to an extraordinary passage where the strings continue to play in the Scherzo’s 3/4 time while the piano introduces a new melody for the Trio in 4/2. The movement poses additional problems for the strings with each of a group of rapidly repeated notes having to be played in a different way including left hand pizzicato.

The slow dark Passacaille makes a fine contrast to the scherzo’s scintillations and its theme (illustrated) is a slowed down version of the Pantoum’s opening. The movement is arch-shaped, starting with a single voice, building to a climax and receding back to the solo piano.

The Final moves into the major and like the first movement is built on unusual Basque-inspired time signatures – here shifting between 5 and 7 beats in the bar with an occasional 4 or 6 thrown in. The opening texture is unusual and technically demanding for the violinist, who has to play an arpeggio consisting entirely of harmonics (illustrated). The difficulty here is that each of the four fingers has to lightly touch a different string in precisely the right position or the note completely fails to sound.

After he had finished composing the Trio, Ravel’s repeated applications to enlist were rejected on health grounds until finally in March 1916 he was accepted as a driver for the motor transport corps, naming his vehicle Adélaïde after his ballet, sub-titled le langage des fleurs.

Matthew Kaner Piano Trio

Matthew Kaner was born in London in 1986 and studied music at King’s College and composition with Julian Anderson and Richard Baker at the Guildhall. He has been a Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2013.

His works include the 2022 BBC Proms commission ‘Pearl’ for the BBCSO, Chorus and baritone Roderick Williams setting medieval poetry in a modern translation by Simon Armitage.
His debut solo album of chamber works was released by Delphian Records in November 2022 and was described as revealing ‘a composer deftly able to draw the listener into his far-reaching imaginative world’.

Amongst his upcoming projects is a concerto for violinist Benjamin Baker.

His Piano Trio of 2021 which lasts around 12 mins is in three movements:

1. Glints in the Water
2. Ripples
3. Eroding Lines

The piece was written for Benjamin Baker, Matthias Balzat and Daniel Lebhardt.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Piano Trio No.1 in B-flat major, D.898 (1827)

Allegro moderato
Andante un poco mosso
Scherzo & Trio: Allegro
Rondo: Allegro vivace

Schubert’s two Piano Trios date from the final years of his life when, frustrated by his lack of success at opera and dissatisfied with his song writing, he returned to instrumental music, overcoming the daunting shade of Beethoven to compose a series of masterpieces. His two piano trios were written after the octet and the late string quartets (including ‘Death and the Maiden’ and the G major quartet) but before the 2-cello string quintet. The trios are both very substantial works, matching his contemporary ‘Great’ C major symphony in length and musical depth. At that time, Schubert was known to Viennese concert-goers almost exclusively as a writer of songs: many male-voice part songs plus the Erlkönig (and a few others). By the end of 1827 the only public performances of his chamber music had been of just three of his works (including the first Piano Trio) in the Schuppanzigh Quartet’s subscription concerts.

Despite Schubert’s failing health and erratic mood swings, the B-flat Trio is radiant. Robert Schumann wrote of it: “One glance at Schubert’s Trio and the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.” The glorious opening theme (illustrated) in unison on violin and cello is confident and optimistic. It also contains two ideas, one local, one global, which reappear in various forms throughout the piece. The local idea is the triplet – crochet pattern under [1]. The global idea is the pattern of the first four bars: simply put, “slow, slow, quick, slow”.

The same pattern reappears immediately in the tender second theme (illustrated) introduced by the cello. After an expansive development of this material Schubert gives us three false starts for the recapitulation in ‘wrong’ keys.

The glorious Andante with its opening cello theme joined rhapsodically by the violin was, incredibly, an afterthought. Schubert originally wrote a slow Adagio, which was posthumously published as a Notturno in E-flat D.897. The Notturno’s opening theme (illustrated) is a slowed down version of the opening of the first movement. It is not clear why Schubert rejected it, but we are lucky that he did since the replacement Andante is one of those movements that you cannot imagine being without – and we do still have the Notturno.

The Scherzo and Trio are based on two dance forms – the Ländler and the waltz. The opening figure of the Scherzo (illustrated) is based on the local triplet-crotchet figure of the first movement, whereas the first four bars of the Trio (illustrated) are in its global ‘slow, slow, fast, slow’ pattern. This global pattern also appears in 2-bar units in the 8-bar opening of the Rondo last movement (illustrated) with the dotted rhythm providing the ‘quick’ quality.

Programme notes by Chris Darwin (Ravel and Schubertl) and Guy Richardson (Kaner).

See Chris Darwin’s Programme Notes for other works on his web page.

Dutilleux  1916 – 2013
Au Gré des Ondes    Along the waves
Prélude en berceuse
Claquettes
Improvisation
Movement perpétuel
Hommage à Bach
Etude

This suite for piano was written in 1946, as incidental music for radio. The “waves”, being radio waves. It is an early, neo classical work in style, with Debussy and Ravel clearly reflected. Critics at the time were disparaging of its old fashioned form, harmony and expression. Audiences however, found it appealing and it was broadcast frequently. Dutilleux’s family were amateur musicians and it is thought that their influence was stronger than that of the current musical developments in Paris, his home.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
‘Le tombeau de Couperin’
(1918)  arranged by Hans Abrahamsen  for wind quintet.
Prélude. Vif
Fugue. Allegro moderato
Forlane. Allegretto
Rigaudon. Assez vif
Menuet. Allegro moderato
Toccata. Vif

Musically, ‘un Tombeau’ is a piece written in memory of someone. Ravel’s original six movement piece for piano is patriotically titled as being in memory of François Couperin (1668-1733), who established a distinctively French keyboard style of composition; but each of the movements is also dedicated to the memory of a different close friend killed in the first world war. When war broke out Ravel was working on his piano trio, the symphonic poem La Valse and a few other projects including LeTombeau. He completed the piano trio in five weeks and then volunteered for service. His several attempts to enlist as an aircraft pilot were turned down on health grounds, but he finally became a driver in the motor transport corps. Despite the death in January 1917 of his mother, who was perhaps the only person to whom he was ever closely emotionally attached, Ravel finished the six pieces of Le Tombeau and planned to perform them. When bombing postponed the initial performance, Ravel used the time to create an orchestral version of four of the original six movements.

Debussy  1862 – 1918
Images  Book 2
Cloches à travers les feuilles     Bells through the leaves
Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût   and the moon descends on the old temple
Poissons d’or     Golden fish

Debussy was taught the piano at an early age and he was a student at the Paris Conservatoire where he took up composition and won the Prix de Rome in 1884. Earlier, in 1879 Debussy travelled to Italy, Austria and Russia where he heard the music of Tchaikovsky and Borodin. In the restaurants and bars of Moscow he heard “gypsy music” and these influences all gave Debussy a liking of unusual music and sound worlds far away from the academic models he was expected to follow in the conservatoire. In 1889 the Universal Exhibition employed a Russian orchestra and also an utterly different sound from a large group of instruments. This was the Gamelan from Java. The different tuning, scale, timbre and the structure of pieces played by the collection of gongs mounted on ornate wooden frames, captured Debussy immediately and his piano compositions reflect this. After all, the piano is a percussive instrument like the gong.

Images book 2 begins with a piece inspired by the church bells of the village of Rahon in the Jura region of France. The second piece evokes Javanese and more generally East Asian music, as understood by Debussy with his French sensibilities. The third piece is an aural picture of a golden fish in a bowl, in a painting or as embroidery on fabric. The exact influence is not recorded.

Francaix   1912 – 1997
Wind Quintet No 1
Andante tranquillo – Allegro assai
Presto
Tema con variazioni  Andante
Tempo di Marcia Francese

Jean Francaix was born into a highly musical family and he was enrolled as a composer and pianist at the Conservatoire of Le Mans, where he lived. Nadia Boulanger taught Francaix and many of his compositions were played in Paris. He won a prize as a pianist at the Paris Conservatoire and toured Europe and the US. He was a prolific composer and wrote for many different instrumental ensembles as well as for the full orchestra. Stylistically Francaix’s music is neo classical and he was strongly influenced by Ravel, Poulenc and Stravinsky. There is a lightness of touch and humour running through his work.

Poulenc   1899 – 1963
Improvisation in A minor No 13
Sextet for piano and wind
Allegro vivace
Divertissement: Andantino
Prestissimo 

Poulenc was born in Paris to a prosperous family and his mother taught him the piano as a young child. Later, as a young man he became one of a group named “les six”. All six friends lived and worked in Montparnasse. Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germainne Tailleferre.  They shared musical ideas and developed their differing styles alongside each other. Despite not attending a conservatoire Poulenc managed to have his music performed and he was helped by Stravinsky who had publishing contacts in London. Poulenc was an excellent pianist and this, together with his Catholic faith gave him confidence to write much vocal and choral music. He travelled in Europe, meeting Schoenberg in Vienna and Casella in Italy.

Poulenc resisted French influences from Messiaen and the mixture of neo classicism and light-weight attractive melodic music, leavened with intense Catholicism, has ensured that his is a singular and instantly recognisable voice.

Improvisation No 13 is one from a group of 15 short pieces. They were composed between 1932 – 59 and some were dedicated to friends. No 13 is a dark mysterious sounding piece and the instruction to use the sustaining pedal helps foster the mood. The languorous melody is simple yet with chromatic shifts and an utter lack of sentimentality it avoids kitsch.

Poulenc’s sextet was begun in 1932 and revised in 1939. It is said to have been influenced by Poulenc’s visits to the circus with his musical friends such as Satie and Milhaud. The first movement is in ternary form.  A-B-A.  Jazzy rhythms and high energy are its characteristics. The second movement has two obviously contrasting sections; one considerably slower than the other. It is a glance back to the contrasting pace of movements in the classical period of Mozart’s time. The final movement is heavily indebted to jazz and ragtime and there are repeats from the previous two movements which help to bind the whole together.

Programme notes by Helen Simpson (Dutilleux, Debussy, Francaix, Poulenc) and Chris Darwin (Ravel)

See Chris Darwin’s Programme Notes for other works on his web page.