Fantaisie

The first performance of Debussy’s Fantaisie for piano and orchestra was originally scheduled for a concert of the Société nationale in Paris in April 1890. The programme was seriously overcrowded, however, and Vincent d’Indy, who was to have conducted the work, was so concerned by the shortage of rehearsal time that he took the decision to concentrate on the first movement of the Fantaisie and omit the other two - whereupon the young composer quietly removed the parts from the music stands and withdrew his work from the concert. He later explained to d’Indy that he would rather have “an adequate performance of all three movements than a satisfactory performance of just the first.” Although Debussy sold the score to Choudens for 200 francs a few days later, it wasn’t published in his life time and, although he twice revised it, he opposed all proposals to have it performed. It was first heard in public only after the composer’s death when Alfred Cortot and Marguerite Long played it on the same day, in London and Lyon respectively, in November 1919.

Obviously, while he had some affection for the work - “I will certainly never abandon that child,” he is quoted as saying - Debussy was also embarrassed by it. The problem was that he had so quickly moved on from the stylistic position he had occupied in 1890. As the composer of the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune, which he completed in 1894, he was no longer prepared to be identified in any way with César Franck and Vincent d’Indy, both of whom are clearly echoed in the Fantaisie. At the same time, while he had been willing to write a virtuoso piece for his pianist friend René Chansarel, he was not really interested in the concerto form even - as in d’Indy’s Symphonie cévenole, which was evidently a model for the Fantaisie - with the piano part integrated into the orchestra rather than presented as a heroic solo role. Uncharacteristic though it is, however, the Fantaisie bears unmistakable signs of its authorship, not least its several instances of whole-tone harmonies and pre-Impressionistic orchestral colouring.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Fantaisie is that it survives for the most part on one, infinitely adaptable theme. The basic material is first heard on languorous woodwind in the pastoral-sounding Andante ma non troppo introduction and is introduced as the brisk main theme of the Allegro giusto shortly after the first entry of the piano. The rest of the movement is essentially an improvisation on that theme in a range of melodic and rhythmic variants passing between the orchestra and the exuberantly decorative piano part. The one other serious contender for thematic attention appears only after a climactic proclamation (marked “proudly”) of the main theme on trumpets. A more lyrical inspiration first presented by oboe, this new theme is awarded a timely reflective episode to itself before restive basses and impatient woodwind urge a recall of the main theme and an ever more brilliant coda.

The Lento e molto espressivo is a sensuously romantic nocturne based on an elusive melody - a curious mixture of wide-spaced linear clarity and chromatic evasion - introduced by muted violins in the opening bars. Even at this early stage, however, before the entry of the piano, a distant echo of the main theme of the first movement is woven into the string texture. After a slightly quicker episode, beginning with a tender new idea on woodwind, another echo of that theme finds its way into the orchestra and, at the quietly expressive climax of the movement, is adopted by the piano as a counterpoint to the reprise of the Lento melody on violins. If these are not deliberate reminders of the first movement, the low mutterings on the basses and at the bottom end of the piano surely are. Certainly, they lead by way of the nearest thing to a piano cadenza into the change of tempo that signals the beginning of the last movement and the return to prominence of the main theme of the work.

At the beginning of the Allegro molto cellos and basses are involved with a pizzicato ostinato - which, though relatively unobtrusive at this stage, is actually both an echo of the main theme of the first movement and an anticipation of that of the last - while woodwind instruments are occupied by apparently more important melodic material above them. The woodwind material is destined, in fact, to give rise to a kind of second subject later on but, once the main theme is definitively introduced in vigorously percussive figuration on the piano, nothing else stands much of a chance. Extensively developed though it was in the first movement, the irrepressible main theme still has the potential for as many as twenty transformations of one kind or another, ranging from the poetically expressive at half the prevailing tempo to the heroically triumphant and to the irresistibly spirited in the acceleration towards the end.