Piano Concerto in C minor Op.12

In the last six months of 1937 France lost three of its most prominent composers – Gabriel Pierné in July, Albert Roussel in August, Maurice Ravel in December. They were all wel known at the time but since then, while Roussel’s and Ravel’s reputations have boomed, Pierné’s has all but collapsed. The difference is that much of Pierné’s fame rested on his activities as a conductor, not least at the Concerts Colonne where he worked for 30 years, as deputy conductor from 1903 and principal from 1910. He had conducted historic first performances of major works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel and Roussel among many others. When he was no longer in view as a conductor, however, he disappeared as a composer too.

Directing 48 different programmes a year for the Concerts Colonne did not stop Pierné composing – far from it: his work list is as long as Roussel’s and Ravel’s put together – but it might well have diluted his creative ambition. Unlike Mahler in similar circumstances, when Pierné was writing music in his summer retreat at Ploujean in Brittany he set out not so much to change the world as to amuse himself. There are large-scale works, like La croisade des enfants, Les enfants à Bethléem, Saint François d'Assise, all of them written between 1902 and 1912, but fashion has militated against choral works of such dimensions. When Pierné is remembered today it is most likely to be for his chamber music, much of it from his last ten years, and two colourful miniatures, the so-called “Entry of the Little Fauns”¹ and the “March of the Little Lead Soldiers”².

Pierné had enjoyed a brilliant career at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied piano with    Marmontel, organ with César Franck, composition with Massenet and won just about every prize available to him, including the much-coveted Prix de Rome in 1882. The Piano Concerto in C minor, the second and much the biggest of his four works for piano and orchestra, was completed in 1887, shortly after his return to Paris after spending what he described as “the three best years of my life”³ in Rome. Dedicated to Marie-Aimée Roger-Miclos, well known as an interpreter of the piano music of Saint-Saëns, it seems to have been modelled on that composer’s already popular Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor Op.22.

The most obvious similarity between the two works is in the overall layout with a scherzo in the place usually occupied by a slow movement. The first movement, however, is entirely Pierné’s own, even if the imposing Maestoso introduction does owe something to Saint-Saëns precedent. It is remarkable more for its anticipation of Rachmaninov, who comes to mind again in the main Allegro deciso when the piano introduces the splendid E-flat-major melody which is to dominate the middle section of the movement and inspire its broad central climax. The Allegro scherzando, on the other hand, clearly derives from the Saint-Saëns model, which has the same tempo heading, is in the same key of E flat major and in the same 6/8 metre. There are melodic similarities too. It is no less engaging for that in its elfin rhythms, its brilliant piano writing and its deft scoring for orchestra, not least horn and trumpet.

In its cyclic strategy, recalling themes from earlier in the work, the last movement owes more to César Franck than Saint-Saëns. Pierné begins here by establishing a new agitato motif in the rumbling piano introduction and, after taking that precaution, has the piano recall the big tune from the first movement with a variant of the agitato motif echoing on the strings. As the tempo changes to Allegro ma non troppo the agitato motif is dramatically incorporated by strings and woodwind in what turns out to be the C-minor main theme of the movement. That theme, offset by a more playful idea for piano in E flat major and another recall of the big tune from the first movement, generates the impulse that leads irresistibly into a frenetic coda.

1L’Entrée des petits faunes

2Marche des petits soldats de plomb

3Les trois plus belles années de ma vie

Ramuntcho

Suite No.1

Ouverture sur des thèmes populaires basques (Overture on Basque folk tunes)

Le jardin de Gracieuse (Gracieuse’s Garden)

La chambre de Franchita (Franchita’s Room)

Fandango

Suite No.2

La cidrerie (The Cider House)

Le Couvent (The Convent)

Rapsodie basque (Basque Rhapsody)

Divertissements¹ sur un thème pastoral Op.49

Marche des petits soldats de plomb Op.11 No.6

In the last six months of 1937 France lost three of its most prominent musicians – Gabriel Pierné in July, Albert Roussel in August, Maurice Ravel in December. They were all celebrated composers at the time but since then, while Roussel’s and Ravel’s reputations have boomed, Pierné’s has all but collapsed. The difference is that much of Pierné’s fame rested on his activities as a conductor, above all at the high-profile Concerts Colonne to which he was attached for as long as 30 years. When he was no longer in view as a conductor he disappeared as a composer too.

Directing 48 different programmes a year for the Concerts Colonne did not stop Pierné composing – far from it: his work list is as long as Roussel’s and Ravel’s put together – but it might well have diluted his creative ambition. Unlike Mahler in similar circumstances, when Pierné was writing music in his summer retreat in Brittany he set out not so much to change the world as to amuse himself. He did write operas, ballets and large-scale choral works but fashion has largely militated against them. When Pierné is remembered today it is most likely to be for his chamber music, much of it from his last ten years, and two colourful orchestral miniature.

Pierné had enjoyed a brilliant career at the Paris Conservatoire where asa composition student of Massenet he had won just about every prize available to him, including the much-coveted Prix de Rome in 1882. The Piano Concerto in C minor, the second and much the biggest of his four works for piano and orchestra, was completed in 1887, shortly after his return to Paris after spending what he described as “the three best years of my life”² in Rome. Dedicated to Marie-Aimée Roger-Miclos, well known as an interpreter of the piano music of Saint-Saëns, it was    modelled in part on that composer’s already popular Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor Op.22.

The most obvious similarity between the two works is in the overall design with a scherzo in the central position place usually occupied by a slow movement. The first movement, however, is entirely Pierné’s own, even if the imposing Maestoso introduction does owe something to Saint-Saëns. It is remarkable more for its anticipation of Rachmaninov, who comes to mind again in the main Allegro deciso, not in the first theme but when the piano introduces the splendid E-flat-major melody which is to dominate the middle section of the movement and inspire its broad central climax. The Allegro scherzando, on the other hand, clearly derives from the Saint-Saëns model, which has the same tempo heading, is in the same key of E flat major and in the same 6/8 metre. There are melodic similarities too. It is no less engaging for that in its elfin rhythms, its brilliant piano writing and its deft scoring for orchestra, not least horn and trumpet.

In its cyclic strategy, recalling themes from earlier in the work, the last movement owes more to Piernés organ-teacher César Franck than Saint-Saëns. He begins here by establishing a new agitato motif in the rumbling piano introduction and than has the piano recall the big tune from the first movement with a variant of the agitato motif echoing on the strings. As the tempo changes to Allegro ma non troppo the agitato motif is dramatically incorporated by strings and woodwind in what turns out to be another thematic echo from the first movement. That theme, offset by a more playful idea for piano in E flat major and another recall of the big tune from the first movement, generates the impulse that leads irresistibly into a frenetic coda.

Pierre Loti’s 1897 novel Ramuntcho is as much about the French Basque country, its scenery and its way of life, as it is about its young hero. The turning point in a not very eventful story comes when Ramuntcho, smuggler and pelota champion, returns to his village after military service and finds that Gracieuse, whom he was expecting to marry in spite of her mother’s opposition, has been coerced into entering a convent. And there, in spite of Ramuncho’s efforts she stays. In the last scene of the necessarily more dramatic stage version – which was first performed at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris in 1908 – Gracieuse is challenged by her Mother Superior to make the choice between God and her lover, applying so much emotional pressure that the young nun and drops dead under the stress of it.

The success of the production owed more than a little to Pierné’s incidental music which – greeted at the time as “full of the conflicting languor, passion and religious fervour of the Basque country”³ – supplied much of the local colour so lovingly described in the novel but difficult to represent on the stage. The Overture to the play, which opens the first of two orchestral suites drawn from the Ramuntcho music in 1910, is a demonstration of how seriously and at the same time how entertainingly Pierné set about creating an authentically Basque backdrop. Rather than designing a unified symphonic construction, he put together a sequence of episodes each with its own tempo and, beginning with a rhythmically distinctive zortzico in 5/8 time, its own Basque material.

Gracieuse’s Garden, set where Ramuntcho and the chaste Gracieuse had their secret meetings, is an idyllic inspiration featuring an expressive exchange between two flutes. On his return to the village from military service he finds his mother Franchita close to death – an event anticipated in Franchita’s Room, which is chilling in its minor harmonies on muted horns, dark in its bassoon and cello colours, desolate in a solo viola’s musing on a Basque lament. Ramuntcho and Gracieuse also used to meet at village dances such as that represented here by a Fandango with picturesque interventions from a pair of piccolos and a drum echoing the pipe-and-tabor bands of the region.   

The second suite begins with the Cider House which reflects the conviviality of the place where Ramuntcho and his smuggler companions would plot their sorties into Spain and, no doubt, entertain themselves with folk tunes like the two introduced separately at first and combined in the closing bars. The Convent is a contrastingly ethereal piece reflecting in its scoring for muted strings the rarified atmosphere of the nunnery and, with the entry of an ancient Basque canticle on woodwind, anticipating the death of Gracieuse. At the end of the second suite the Basque Rhapsody balances the Overture on Basque tunes at the beginning of the first. But, while it too is constructed in episodes each with its own Basque tune, it conforms to the rhapsody type by beginning unhurriedly and gradually increasing in speed. The central highlight is another 5/8 zortzico, this one introduced by piccolo and oboe over an ostinato rhythm on a traditional Basque drum, and the exhilarating ending is based on the unofficial Basque anthem Gernikako arbola.

While he was no innovator, Pierné did like to keep up with contemporary trends. The difference between the Piano Concerto of 1887 and the Divertissements sur un thème pastoral of 1931 is so marked that the two works could be by different composers. Clearly, from his rostrum in the Théâtre du Châtelet he had noted the revolution in taste promoted by Erik Satie and the young composers of the Groupe des Six in the 1920s. He was far from allying himself with them – he was a generation older – but he liked the idea of drawing on popular sources, such as jazz and the music hall, and he was not averse to the harmonic bravado aspect of their style.

That much is clear from the Divertissements which the composer dedicated to the members of the Orchestre Colonne and which was first performed by them under his direction in the Châtelet in February 1932. That obviously explains the virtuoso scoring of the piece. Why he called it Divertissements is not so clear but but it was better than calling it variations since, although it begins that way, it develops its own form. The theme, introduced by a solo cor anglais, derives its pastoral character largely from its Lydian modality. In the first double (a baroque term Pierné preferred to variation here) it is entrusted to the double basses, in the second to violins and in the third it is transformed in neo-classical style into a canon for pizzicato strings. And so it goes on, passing to bassoon and double bassoon under chromatic decoration from other woodwind, to horns, to trombones and tuba, to strings under a halo of violin harmonics. By now, as the sections increase in length, Pierné is beginning to enjoy himself. A waltz features solos strings and a comparatively extended Cortège–Blues alternates a characteristic march tune for trumpet with more or less jazzy episodes with stylish gestures from trombone among others. The last two sections are an effectively contrasted Phrase with expressive solos for alto saxophone and an explosively energetic, brilliantly scored Gigue.

Of the two orchestral miniatures that have always retained their popularity, the Marche des petits soldats de plomb and the Ecole des Aegipans (Entry of the Little Fauns) from the ballet Cydalise et le chèvre-pied, the former was written in 1887 for an album of easy piano pieces called Pour mes petits amis. It became such a favourite    that Pierné was persuaded to issue an orchestral version where, miraculously, it loses nothing of its old-fashioned nursery charm.

Gerald Larner

1Divertissements (plural) is corrrect

2Les trois plus belles années de ma vie

3original in English