Mél Bonis (1858-1937)
Suite en trio, Op.59 / 1903
1. Sérénade
2. Pastorale
3. Scherzo
Pisey Oum-violin, Anton Isselhardt-flute, Katy Lo Wing-piano
The Suite en Trio, Op. 59 is one of the earliest surviving chamber work by the composer. It was written in 1899 along with four other works. This suite was performed primarily from the manuscript until its publication in 1903 by Demets and washer first successful chamber work as evidentfrom this 1904 letter from Louis Fleury to Mel Bonis:'(last night in Étretat) We successfully played the 'Trio flute violin piano' of Mel Bonis before an enthusiastic audience. The trio was written at a time when the composer was still finding her niche in the world of chamber music. This particular work, fondly called by the composer as 'Mon Petit Trio,' is a great example exhibiting the importance of form and structure to Mel Bonis' compositions.
The trio is another fine addition to the growing Bonis discography brings a variety of works dating from 1900-1930 with the composer's unique synthesis of Impressionism and late Romanticism with "oriental" and folk touches, always presented with finesse and a delightful delicacy.
Camille Saint Saëns (1835-1921)
Danse macabre, Op. 40 / 1874
Sharon Lui-violin, Katy Lo Wing-piano
Danse macabre, originally, is a tone poem for orchestra. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based on an old French superstition. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin part.
According to legend, Death appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.
When Danse macabre was first performed on January 24, 1875 it was not well received and caused widespread feelings of anxiety. Shortly after the premiere, the piece was transcribed into a piano arrangement by Franz Liszt, a good friend of Saint-Saëns. Today, it is considered one of Saint-Saëns' masterpieces, widely regarded and reproduced in both high and popular culture.
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)
Deux Interludes / 1946
I. Andante expressivo
II. Allegro vivo
Pisey Oum-violin, Anton Isselhardt-flute, Katy Lo Wing-piano
Ibert refused to ally himself to any particular musical fashion or school, maintaining that "all systems are valid", a position that has caused many commentators to categorise him as "eclectic". His biographer, Alexandra Laederich, writes, "His music can be festive and gay . lyrical and inspired, or descriptive and evocative often tinged with gentle humour . all the elements of his musical language bar that of harmony relate closely to the Classical tradition".
The two interludes come from Ibert's incidental music for Suzanne Lilar's play Le Burlador (The Seducer), apparently a feminist take on the iconic Don Juan story. The interludes comprise an eloquent music pair using a time honored slow-fast pattern and a stylistic projection of first France then Spain, a perfect representative of the Franco-Iberian mélange found throughout the music of Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, etc. The first interlude is a timeless minuet, slow, poised, delicate and slightly wistful. Utterly French in the most topical and poetic way, the three-part form moves from chaste to animate and back, a poignant duet sustained in the rhythmic web of the harp. The second interlude is utterly Spanish, a spicy Andalusian dance alla Gitano. The harp figures prominently with its evocation of flamenco guitar while the melodic and ornamental lines by clarinet and cello evince a vivid Iberian perfume.
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
'Dream-Children' Op.43 / 1902
Andante in G minor
Allegretto piacevole in G major
Sharon Lui-violin, Anton Isselhardt-flute, Katy Lo Wing-piano
Dream Children, Op 43 is a musical work for small orchestra by Sir Edward Elgar. There are two movements. These two pieces were written in 1902, when Elgar was approaching the peak of his fame and popularity. Unusually for Elgar they were not written to any commission. It was Elgar's practice to work in small sections and then put them together into a whole.
The pieces are inspired by 'Dream-Children-A Reverie', one of the Essays by Charles Lamb published in 1822. The writer imagines telling his 'little ones', called Alice and John, some tales of their great-grandmother Field and her house, and of his own courtship, in hope and eventual despair, for another Alice before, at the end of the essay, mysteriously.
'What might have been' reflects a constant nostalgia throughout Elgar's music, and is the predominating mood of both the Dream Children pieces, particularly the wistful No 1. No 2 is more smiling in tone, but reverts to nostalgia at the end, where it quotes the theme which began No. 1.
Trancription for flue/violin and piano by Frank Louis Schneider or Frank Louis Taylor (name change?) (18 November 1860 - 19 January 1942) Editor SCHOTT &co LONDON 1911 (no other recourses available)
Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941)
Tarantelle / 1903
Pisey Oum-violin, Anton Isselhardt-flute, Katy Lo Wing-piano
Between the wars, Gaubert was at the epicentre of French musical life, professor of flute at the Paris Conservatoire and principal conductor of both the Paris Opéra and the Société des Concerts. As a composer, Gaubert's reputation is far less central. An assimilator rather than an innovator, his charming music is redolent of the world of Franck, Ravel and Debussy. As a flautist by training, the flute features heavily in Gaubert's oeuvre and his fourteen works for flute and piano remain some of his best known works.
The Tarantelle for flute, oboe (violin) and piano, was Gaubert's first published piece and it is dedicated to Gaubert's flute professor, Paul Taffanel
Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
Meditation from Thais vl/pn / 1894
Pisey Oum-violin, Katy Lo Wing-piano
Jules Massenet was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas. "Méditation" is a symphonic intermezzo from the opera Thaïs. The piece is originally written for solo violin and orchestra. The opera premiered at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on March 16, 1894.
The Méditation from Thaïs is considered to be one of the great encore pieces; world-class violin soloists such as, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Itzhak Perlman, David Garrett and Maxim Vengerov have performed the piece as soloists with major orchestras throughout the world. The Méditation has been transcribed for violin and piano and for other instruments as well. (Trancription by the Belgian violinjst, teacher and composer Martin Pierre Marsick 1847-1924)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Five Pieces / 1934
Pisey Oum-violin, Sharon Lui-violin, Katy Lo Wing-piano
I. Prelude
II. Gavotte
III. Elegy
IV. Waltz
V. Polka
When listeners think of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75), they are likely to envision a composer whose music is as close as music gets to bipolar, ricocheting from unbridled euphoria to despondency and terror, often settling on the latter. Such music is often encountered in the composer's symphonies and string quartets, but the Five Pieces performed here are not that kind of music. They aspire only to entertain, to elicit a nod of agreeable connection, to prompt a welcome smile. The movements trace their ancestry to scores Shostakovich originally composed for film, ballet, and theater productions, with one questionable exception. But although he invented all the music, the performance as presented here is twice removed from the composer.
The recasting of the Five Pieces from their original versions was done by Shostakovich's friend Levon Atovmyan (1901-73), a Turkmen composer, arranger, and man-about-the-music-industry. In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, Atovmyan created many composer-approved suites comprising movements from assorted Shostakovich works, including the four Ballet Suites and the suites from the film scores for The Gadfly (1955) and Hamlet (1932). Atovmyan apparently assembled the Five Pieces by 1970, and they were published under the rubric Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano. The parts can also be played in various instrumentation, and that is how the set is performed in this concert-an adaptation of an arrangement of original movements by Shostakovich.
The Prelude derives from Shostakovich's music for The Gadfly, where it is titled "Guitars" and was to be played by two guitars. Atovmyan had already transcribed this movement in his orchestral Suite from The Gadfly (Opus 78a), in which guise it may be familiar to some listeners. In that setting, he mixed in some music from a separate Gadfly section, but in the Five Pieces he reverts to the text Shostakovich originally wrote (though with bowed strings instead of plucked ones). It balances on the thin boundary between pensive Russian melancholy and genial Viennese good cheer. The two string instruments track each other almost always in the same rhythm, though in harmony, a characteristic that maintains for nearly the entire suite.
The Gavotte and the Elegy are both taken from Shostakovich's incidental music for a production of the play The Human Comedy, based on episodes from Balzac's novels; the play was introduced in 1934 at Moscow's Vakhtangov Theatre. The Gavotte (a French courtly dance), is a lighthearted movement, here one that chuckles and perhaps even hiccups; and the Elegy assumes a pose of unruffled peacefulness. Atomyan used orchestral settings of both of these movements in the 1951 Ballet Suite No. 3.
The Waltz robes the flowing dance in a lightly mournful, minor-key sensibility so often encountered in Russian light music. This movement's source remains a mystery, but this music does appear in a collection called Shostakovich: Easy Pieces for the Piano, issued by publisher G. Schirmer; that volume does not identify the source. It may possibly have been an original composition by Atovmyan.
The set concludes with a giddy Polka, which originated in the 1935 comedy-ballet The Limpid Stream, where it appears as the "Dance of the Milkmaid and the Tractor Driver." Atovmyan also used it in the Ballet Suite No. 1 (published in 1949). Aficionados of song recitals may join me in believing that William Bolcom must have had this polka on his mind when he composed his evergreen encore "Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise." - James M. Keller
James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the San Francisco Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. He is the author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide, published by Oxford University Press.
