17
Festival
programme
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Concert in D major for piano, violin and
string quartet, Op.21
Décidé
Sicilienne
Grave
Finale
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Jack Liebeck (Violin)
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David Selig (Piano)
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Sophie Rowell (Violin)
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Anne Horton (Violin)
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Sally Boud (Viola)
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Rachel Johnston (Cello)
sunday 6th July
11.30am sT JAMEs' CATHEDrAL
Love and Springtime
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
scherzo in C minor, Op.post (woO2)
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Sophie Rowell (Violin)
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Hamish Milne (Piano)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Liebestreu, Op.3 No.1
Liebe und Frühling I, Op.3 No.2
Liebe und Frühling II, Op.3 No.3
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Thomas Meglioranza (Baritone)
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Piers Lane (Piano)
Perhaps because of his relative affluence and limited formal training, Chausson
was profoundly self-critical, and, like many self-taught artists, was obsessed with
perfecting his craft. We can imagine the feelings then that led him to write in his diary:
`Never have I had such a success! I can't get over it... I feel light and joyful, something
I haven't been for a long time. It's done me good and given me courage. I believe I'll
work with more confidence in the future.'
That was in 1892 after the first performance of this `Concert' in Brussels, a breakthrough
in both his technique and his sense of worth as a composer. The work shows the
influence of Franck: the solid four-movement design, the structural re-use of the three
chords with which the work opens, the sometimes strenuous textures and chromatic
harmony. But the piece is also an exercise in `de-Wagnerisation', in that Chausson
was trying to reclaim the virtues of formal clarity by reimagining the baroque concerto
grosso. The violin and piano are certainly soloists, and the string quartet provides the
ripieno group, but at times of course these divisions dissolve, with the piano taking a
kind of continuo role to balance the luxuriant sound of high strings.
The work inaugurated a new period in Chausson's development, but this was cruelly
cut short when he was killed, aged 44, in a cycling accident.
In 1853 Brahms' friendship with the violinist Joseph Joachim began in earnest, with
Joachim writing to Brahms' parents of how `Johannes had stimulated my work as
an artist to an extent beyond my hopes... my friendship is always at his disposal'.
Biographer Karl Geiringer notes that Brahms` conscientiously asked his friend's advice
on all technical questions and then hardly ever followed it'. Be that as it may, in 1853
Brahms collaborated with Albert Dietrich and Robert Schumann on a composite work,
often known as the F A E Sonata from Joachim's motto Frei aber einsam, or `free but
lonely'. Brahms wrote the scherzo, but the work remained unpublished until 1906.
Brahms' Six Songs, Op.3 date from 1853. They represent fairly conventional Romantic
tropes: in the first, to a poem by Robert Reinick, a mother counsels her child to sink
into her sadness like stone in the sea, and destroy the love in her heart. In two poems
by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben Brahms explores `Love and Spring'.
In Op.3 No.2 the lover likens himself to the vine wrapping itself around his beloved;
in the following song, he tells his love that she is the spring, and he has no need of
flowers, birds and so on.
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