THE BELFAST MUSIC SOCIETY Paris in association with THE ARTS COUNCIL FOR NORTHERN IRELAND and THE MUSIC DEPARTMENT, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY CECILE OUSSET (piano) Elmwood Hall 1895 7.30 p.m., Saturday, 12 October 1985 whom that

1 This evening's programme is entirely of music by French A composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. of Bo the five composers, all were capable pianists, and all but Chabrier made recordings of some of their own keyboard music. Working as they did chiefly in Paris during much the same period, their paths frequently crossed. Fauré, especially, as the middle one in age, serves as a link between the oldest, Saint-Saëns, whose pupil he had been at the Ecole Niedermeyer, and the youngest, Ravel, whom he taught at the Conservatoire. Among other points of #12 contact, Saint-Saëns, Chabrier and Fauré were founder- members of the influential Société Nationale de musique which played such a vital part in promoting the works of ded contemporary French composers in the later decades of the 19th century. 2960 vanddec ********* Theme and Variations, Op.73 Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) The majority of Fauré's substantial body of piano music took the form of Nocturnes, Barcarolles, Impromptus and Preludes. There are no sonatas - Fauré reserved that is structure for chamber music - so the Theme and Variations is his most extended keyboard work. Written in 1895, Liv this piece falls half-way through Fauré's long composing life, and exhibits features of his middle-period style as well as demonstrating his respect for balance and clarity. The most obvious model is Schumann's 'Études Symphoniques with which it shares the same key - C sharp minor. The theme alternates two four-bar sections - ABABA - and the succeeding eleven variations for the most part remaind fairly close to the structure of the main theme with its characteristic cadencing on the C sharp minor tonic chord at the end of the A sections. Variety is provided by a number of tempo and time signature changes, and by the turn to the major key for the final variation.

Although Fauré's hearing failed in his later years, he contrived to perform the accompaniments to his songs up to 1919, well into his 70s. He made recordings of several of his piano pieces in 1913 which demonstrate that even at that late stage in his career he was still a capable pianist; unfortunately the recording of his Theme and Variations has disappeared. ni Six Preludes 1 Brouillards 2 3 Dous so Debussy wrote two books of Preludes, each consisting of twelve pieces. All of them have titles, though these are given at the end, as though Debussy does not wish to be o impose the extra-musical evocations on performer or listener. The six to be played this evening are all taken from Book II (1913). Claude Debussy 2-(1862-1918) si bus - ASASA La puerta del Vino d Although each piece is distinctive and individual, we may sense a parallel in several instances with one of al the Preludes from the 1st Book. In this case it is wie with 'Voiles'; the pieces share something of the same veiled or misty atmosphere. Here it is achieved partly by bitonal effects the combination of two keys: the left hand mostly plays chords in C major, on the white notes, while the right hand has mainly flowing patterns on flattened or sharpened (largely black) notes. de Debussy visited Spain only once- spending just a few hours at San Sebastian in the northern Basque country, watching a bullfight - but he captured the musical character of Spain in several pieces which many Spaniards, among them the composer, Falla, found totally convincing.

3 It was Falla who sent Debussy the postcard of the Wine Gate to the Alhambra in Granada which stimulated the composition of this piece - a counterpart to 'La sérénade interrompue' in Book I. This is less a representation of an architectural feature, more a reflection of the nature. of Spain and the Spaniards as Debussy saw it. The piece is headed with sharp contrasts of extreme violence and impassioned sweetness' and the music incorporates habanera rhythms and acerbic bitonal effects. 5 Bruyères 6 Debussy never visited Scotland - though he made several trips to England - but this piece, and 'La fille aux cheveux de lin' in Book I may reflect something of the exotic attraction which that northern country, with its many romantic and literary overtones, exerted on continental Europeans from the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Ossian, Burns and Sir Walter Scott onwards. The composer asks that both pieces shall be calm and sweetly expressive; their comparatively gentle and us simple character is embodied in the largely diatonic nature of the music (keeping mostly to the notes of the scale). "General Lavine" - eccentric The San Francisco Chronicle of March 11, 1945, ran an article on General Lavine - not one of the heroes of the Second World War which was then drawing to a close, s but a former clown or 'comic juggler' who was now t occupying his years of retirement from the entertainment world in producing military campaign ribbons in the desert town of Twenty-nine Palms, California, 'hard by the Joshua Tree National Monument'. Debussy did not live to savour the bizarre second career of the man whose act he had enjoyed in Médrano's Circus at the Marigny Theatre on the Champs Elysées just before the

4 First World War, and whose American provenance elicited the cake-walk rhythms of this piece - somewhat reminiscent of 'Minstrels in Book I, as well as of the 'Golliwog's Cake-Walk'. 8 Ondine Five years earlier, Ravel had included a piece with the same title as the first of his set of three piano pieces, 'Gaspard de la Nuit'. But Ravel's piece is more extended than this comparatively small-scale prelude of Debussy's, and was based on a prose-poem of Louis Bertrand's. The name was applied in Nordic folk-lore to water-nymphs, of whom the more malevolent ones (such as the Lorelei) lured boatmen to their destruction in lakes and rivers. This is the last of Debussy's pieces of water-imagery other examples are 'En bateau', 'Sirènes', 'Reflets dans l'eau', 'La mer' - and 'La cathédrale engloutie' in Book I. 12 Feux d'artifice Robert Schmitz suggests the pyrotechnics of a Bastille Day celebration as a parallel to this final display of musical fireworks. Marguerite Long, who had the benefit of the composer's advice as she prepared for performances of this and others of his pieces, wrote, "It is entirely extrovert and scintillates with an unashamed gladness. When one suddenly encounters a reference to the Marseillaise there is a sense of melancholy: the festivities are at an end." INTERVAL

Bourrée fantasque 5 Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) Chabrier was among the best-loved by his fellow-musicians, and one of the most influential on the younger generation - Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and many others acknowledge their indebtedness. This piece, one of the last works he completed before his tragic physical and mental decline, is also one of the most remarkable, both for its technical demands and its harmonic resourcefulness - despite its title, it bears little resemblance to the 18th century dance. gles2ellyanna In common with the other composers represented this evening, Chabrier was an able pianist if, according to his friend and fellow-musician, Alfred Bruneau, an unusually forceful one: oft Sonatine (1903-5) Modére Adogtag Mouvement de Menuet Animé "He played the piano as no one has ever played it before, or ever will. The sight of Chabrier, in a drawing-room full of elegant women, advancing towards the fragile instrument and then playing his 'España' in a blaze of broken strings, hammers reduced to pulp and splintered keys, was indescribably droll, and a spectacle of truly epic grandeur". Jeux d'eau (1901) Maurice Ravel (1874-1937) contemporaries The poet Henri de Régnier was one of the who contributed in his case, a sonnet to the 'hommage à Chabrier', and it is from de Régnier's prose poem, 'Fête d'eau' from his collection 'La cité des eaux' that the quotation 'Dieu fluvial riant de l'eau qui le chatouille (A river god laughing at the water which

6 titillates him) which heads 'Jeux d'eau' is taken; it was written out on the manuscript by the poet himself. So this, like Ravel's (and Debussy's) 'Ondine', and 'Une barque sur l'océan' from 'Miroirs' embodies water imagery. The title would appear to derive from Liszt's 'Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este', and some elements of the style of virtuosity are attributable to the same composer. The dedication, 'à mon cher maître Gabriel Fauré', acknowledges a more general indebtedness. But although Ravel participated in Fauré's composition class at the Conservatoire until 1903, this piece shows that he was already totally mature both technically and stylistically, with his own quite distinctive voice. His next piano work, the Sonatine, demonstrates Ravel's regard for form and clarity, the values of a century (the 18th) in which France could boast a school of keyboard writers, with Couperin and Rameau the leading figures, which might not fear comparison with those of any other country. (Debussy, in his last years, was to write chamber works which aimed to draw on this tradition). The first movement follows the orthodox structure of sonata form, but the textures as at the start, with the melody in parallel octaves at top and bottom enclosing mobile accompaniment patterns within - are characteristically Ravelian. Likewise, the second movement fills the metrical mould of the 18th century minuet with the richer harmonic fare of the turn of the century (including many chords of the seventh, as well as modal inflections). Both this movement and the perpetual motion finale make prominent use of the interval of the falling 4th which appeared at the very start of the work. Etude en forme de valse, Op.52 No.6 (1877) Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) As a pianist Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy; he appeared first in a public concert at the age of four years seven months, and he was still giving public recitals in his

7 last his 86th year. He was almost equally precocious as a composer, and since, as he admitted himself, he produced music "as naturally as a tree produces apples", he was dauntingly prolific. 'His respectful pupil', as Fauré signed himself on a caricature of Saint-Saëns which depicted the strings of a harp attached at the upper ende to his teacher's elongated proboscis and at the lower end to his outstretched shoe, described him as "the most complete musician we have ever had". nev sitt of his huge output, only a sadly small proportion of favourites are heard more than rarely. The same applies also to his piano music: there are four sets each of six studies (one of the sets being for left hand alone), but only this earliest set Op.52, appears on concert programmes and in record catalogues. The last piece of the set is deservedly the most popular among players and audiences alike. The incorporation of valse rhythms, the dance type Saint-Saëns favours most of all, recalls the informal concert in Munich at the time of the Agadir crisis in 1911, when war between France and Germany seemed imminent. Fauré and Debussy had both refused to participate, but Saint-Saëns chose to play one of his valses as a small musical contribution to the healing of the rift, and Richard Strauss responded with the newly composed waltzes from 'Rosenkavalier'. 118 ISTRA Notes by Michael Nuttall

8 TONIGHT'S ARTISTY CECILE OUSSET is recognised as one of the foremost pianists of the present day. Born in Tarbes in France, she gave her first performance at the age of five. She went on to study at the Paris Conservatoire under Marcel Ciampi, and at the age of 14 she received first prize in the piano graduation class. A major prizewinner at many competitions, including the Van Cliburn, Queen Elizabeth of the Belgium, Busoni, and the Marguerite Long - Jacques Thibaud competition, she is in great demand throughout the world and pursues an active concert career on all five continents. Cecile Ousset has made a number of concerto and solo piano records for EMI to wide critical acclaim. Although her home during the season is in Paris, Cecile Ousset spends the summer months based at her country home in a small medieval village near the historic town of Albi in southern France NEXT RECITAL 19802 Saturday, 2 November 1985 7.30 p.m. - Elmwood Hall LINDSAY STRING QUARTET Haydn Quartet in C, Op.33 No. 3 - 'The Bird' Tippett Quartet No. 1 Beethoven Quartet Op.130 with the Grosse Fuge