Programme — Cello Sonata (1915), Prologue: Lent, Sérénade: Modérément animé – Vivace – Modérément animé – …

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Cello Sonata (1915)

Prologue: Lent

Sérénade: Modérément animé – Vivace – Modérément animé –

Finale: Animé

“I like its proportions and, in the best sense of the word, its almost classical form,”said Debussy of his Cello Sonata. By “classical form” he did not mean sonata form. Working in the middle of the First World War and conscious of his national heritage – he signed himself “Claude Debussy Musicien Français” on the title page – he was thinking here, and in two more sonatas he was to write in the last few years of his life, of pre-classical models by French composers like Couperin or Rameau. There is an indication of that in the keyboard introduction to the Cello Sonata which, before the poetic intervention of the cello, sounds like the opening of a French overture. If there are traces of commedia dell’arte in the fantastic nocturnal scenario of the Sérénade and of the Spanish idiom in the rondo-shaped Finale, at least there is nothing German about them.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Flute Quartet in D major K.285 (1777)

Allegro

Adagio –

Rondeau

Mozart’s attitude to the flute was, at best, ambiguous. His declaration to his father, in a letter home from Mannheim in 1778, that it was “an instrument that I detest” seems to leave little room for doubt. But, as Leopold immediately realised, Wolfgang was making excuses for failing to fulfil the terms of a commission and for losing more than half his fee in consequence: he didn’t have the time, he wasn’t in the mood, he didn’t like the flute - and, as he did not say, he was distracted by a growing passion for Aloysia Weber. Certainly, having been asked by an amateur flautist to write three concertos and four quartets, he lost interest in the project before completing it. But, as for “detesting” the instrument, there is little evidence of that in the music itself, least of all in the Quartet in D major.

Written within days of Ferdinand Dejean placing his commission, the Quartet in D is of such quality as to confirm that it was written before disillusion, or distraction, set in. The opening Allegro is not only briskly business-like but also melodically abundant, offering twice as many themes as it strictly needs. Its lightly contrapuntal textures are deftly scored and instrumental colouring is imaginatively applied, above all in the sustained flute phrases poised over undulating strings on a decrescendo at the end of the exposition. Similarly, it is difficult to believe that the composer who writes so captivatingly for flute to the delicate accompaniment of pizzicato strings in the central Adagio didn’t actually relish its B minor melancholy. It leads directly without a break (but perhaps by way of a cadenza) into the Rondeau finale which, in spite of its French title, is an early approximation to the Viennese sonata-rondo in form. Based on a vaguely exotic (or, in the terminology of the day, “Turkish”) main theme, it is as fertile in melody as the first movement and, given the idiomatic prominence of the viola in the second episode, even more resourcefully scored.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Violin Sonata (1917)

Allegro vivo

Interméde: Fantasque et léger

Finale: Très animé

The Violin Sonata was Debussy’s last completed work and its first performance - in which the composer accompanied Gaston Poulet in the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 5 May 1917 - was the occasion of his last appearance in public as a pianist. The comparatively severe style of the piece is, however, only partially attributable to the terminally serious state of the composer’s health at the time. It has more to do with a new war-time aesthetic - observed also by Ravel in his Tombeau de Couperin - which rejected the German tradition in music and embraced instead the example of the great French masters of the eighteenth century, Couperin and Rameau. It was in that spirit that in 1915 Debussy had conceived the idea of writing a set of six sonatas which would restore French baroque standards to modern instrumental music. The title page, designed in a pastiche eighteenth-century style and printed in the scores of the three sonatas he completed, says it all: Six Sonates pour divers instruments composées par Claude Debussy, Musicien Français.

There is little eighteenth-century stylisation in the actual music. The pre-classical element in all three sonatas is more a matter of avoiding sonata form and of adopting a manner of expression which Debussy described as “la fantaisie dans la sensibilité.” This last quality he seems to have associated with the commedia dell’arte: certainly, there is quite a lot of it in the Cello Sonata (at one time called Pierrot fâché avec la lune) and more than a little in the Violin Sonata. It seems to imply as well a kind of caprice of stylistic allusions. The opening theme of the Violin Sonata has just a hint of the blues in its gentle syncopations and both themes of the slower middle section of the first movement, where the violin carries the melodic line over piano arpeggios, are Spanish in colour. The passionate flamenco decoration added to one of them in the coda is clear confirmation of that.

The Intermède, headed fantasque et léger, introduces the violin as Pierrot. He makes a virtuoso acrobat’s entrance, amuses himself on his mandolin, mocks a clumsy companion represented by the left hand of the piano, and in the middle section delivers a serenade furnished with sentimental portamento phrasing and deep-drawn sighs.

In the Finale Pierrot is displaced by a character from a higher form of comedy. After a brief and somewhat disorientated recall of the blues melody from the opening of the work, the violin takes flight in an aerial frolic not unlike La danse de Puck in the first book of Préludes. There is a kind of serenade here too but, while it is not above applying the devices of the salon violinist to a variant of the aerial theme, it is rather more serious. The coda, based on an accelerating ostinato on the piano, is not only serious but dramatic too.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Quartet in G minor, K.478 (1785)

Allegro

Andante

Rondo

The Viennese publisher of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor was so disappointed by his failure to sell it that he cancelled a contract that would have supplied him with two more works of the same kind. It was partly his fault, however. No one in 1785 had seen a score like it, with piano and string trio perfectly integrated in true chamber-music equality. But, instead of presenting it as something new, Hoffmeister published it an existing series “for harpsichord or fortepiano.” No wonder the forte-pianists - not to mention the harpsichordists - found it difficult to make an effect with a work that, far from being a keyboard solo with string accompaniment, is “very cunningly scored and in performance needs the utmost precision in all four parts,” as one exceptionally perceptive critic remarked at the time.

The opening bars, for the four instruments in octaves, seem to indicate that the Viennese piano and the string trio were approximately equal in acoustic weight. This does not mean, however, that when Mozart combines the piano with the whole string trio, as he does throughout the first movement, the string instruments do not have their own individual voices. In developing the opening four-note theme, which is basically what the first subject consists of, the composer performs a variety of textural balancing acts to make sure that each string part can be heard without reducing the brilliance of the piano part. Mutual obsession with that peremptory theme has such a profound influence on the emotional atmosphere that the second subject, which had originally appeared in a radiant B flat major, can only be recapitulated in G minor - which unhappy outcome is emphatically confirmed in the coda.

The emotional tendency of the two remaining movements is just the opposite. The Andante is in the coveted key of B flat major and, in spite of the early hint of G minor in the first subject, there are no traumas. It is so relaxed, in fact, that Mozart even allows himself to threaten the integrity of the string trio by awarding an occasional solo to a specially privileged violinist.

The final Rondo comfortably and cheerfully inhabits G major, which was scarcely even glimpsed in the opening Allegro, Although there is a distinct division of responsibility between piano and strings in the melodically abundant second subject, textural integrity is restored here too. And in the coda, where the tonality crashes dramatically into the wrong key, Mozart uses the full quasi-orchestral potential of the ensemble to force it straight back into G major, where it belongs.