Though he enjoyed a long career as one of the Paris Conservatoire's most remarkable teachers as well as a pre-eminent organist, César Franck was largely ignored by the French musical establishment during his lifetime. His Belgian birth contributed to his outsider status; in order to become the Conservatoire's professor of organ in 1871 he had to take French citizenship. Moreover, Franck was a gentle, unworldly man—serious, sincere, and fervently Catholic—and thus was poorly equipped to deal with the highly politicized Parisian musical scene in the second half of the 19th century. But if he was unable or unwilling to fight for recognition, his devoted pupils— among them men soon to become famous themselves, Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, and Ernest Chausson—were eager to proclaim his greatness. To them, he was almost a living saint—"Pater seraphicus" they called him—and Beethoven's true heir. Their proselytizing and the strength of his late works made him famous within a few years of his death in 1890.

A late-bloomer as a composer, Franck created all the works for which he is remembered today during the last decade-and-a-half of his life, including his famous Symphony in D Minor and the exquisite Violin Sonata we’ll hear this evening. It was written during the summer of 1886 as a wedding present for Franck’s countryman Eugène Ysaye, one of the legendary violin virtuosos of the 19th century. Premiered by Ysaye in Brussels on December 16, 1886, it was a success from the beginning and ranks today as one of the most popular of all violin sonatas, as well as one of the masterpieces of the French chamber music repertoire.

Like Franz Liszt, Franck gravitated in many of his works to a compositional approach known as “cyclical form.” This technique introduces a basic melodic idea or theme, also known as a “motto,” at the beginning of the piece and then transforms it into related melodies (Franck referred to them as “cousins”) recurring throughout the work. In the Sonata, the motto idea is a simple rocking up-and-down on the interval of a third, which the violin sings as it enters.

Sounding more like an inner movement than a traditional opening movement, the lovely, quizzical first movement, rocking gently in 9/8 time, creates an original, understated beginning. It is also unusual in that it mostly evades the home key of A Major, opting instead for an ambiguous tonality. On its entrance, the violin introduces the rocking motto idea and expands it into a beguiling melody. The piano presents the rhapsodic descending second theme, but the violin always prefers to shift back to its opening melody. Without any development, all this music reprises, with the violin’s melody rising to passionate heights. The movement closes with a wonderful last phrase for the violin, with dark harmonic shading and a poignant fade-out.

If the tone of the first movement was surprising, the bold and energetic second movement in D Minor is a perfect example of a first-movement sonata allegro form. It explodes with passionate fervor, with the piano introducing a stormy principal theme marked by off-the-beat phrasing and turbulent chromaticism. This surges right into the second theme, led by the violin: a new version of the rocking motto idea urged-on by the impetuous piano accompaniment. The tempo finally slows and the volume drops for the movement’s most remarkable passage, in which the violin sings a hauntingly melancholy melody, rising and falling in great sweeps over a wide range. A brief but highly dramatic development section flows directly into the recapitulation with the violin now carrying the stormy principal theme. Though the slow, haunting passage returns, the movement ends in bravura fireworks.

To open the free-form Recitativo-Fantasia, the piano returns to the rocking motto idea, now in pensive chords. The violin responds with a flowing, improvisatory recitative mimicking an operatic soprano in full cry. Midway through this movement over the piano’s caressing arpeggios, the violin introduces a pair of new melodies that will also play important roles in the finale. The gentle first one stretches the motto’s rising third interval to a fourth while the second is much more dramatic with the violin plunging downward before soaring heroically upward. This music grows very impassioned before the movement closes softly and moodily in F-sharp Minor.

With its sweetly appealing melody sung by the piano and violin in canon, the finale is one of the most beloved movements ever written for these two instruments. This theme appears over and over, always in different keys, as the refrain of this sonata-rondo form. The first episode brings back the gentle theme from movement three in the piano while the violin swirls freely above; later it reappears in the violin. During the middle development episode, its heroic partner theme also returns, played with great power by the violin. Ultimately, though, it is the sweetly singing canon that carries the movement to its passionate, heartwarming conclusion.

Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012

Born into a wealthy French family, Ernest Chausson would never have needed to work a day in his life. But after earning two law degrees, he chose to devote his life to composing, painstakingly learning his craft under César Franck. Greater inspiration came from the artistic salons he frequented or hosted at his Parisian townhouse. He was a friend of Debussy and with him joined the circle of Symbolist poets under the tutelage of Mallarmé. Chausson was also an art connoisseur, and major works by Degas, Renoir, Manet, Corot, and Gauguin adorned the walls of his home, while many of those painters along with the sculptor Rodin and Paris’ leading musicians were regular visitors.

Chausson was beloved for his calm disposition and generosity, but privately he nursed a morbid lack of confidence, fearful that because of his wealth, people would dismiss him as an amateur. Sadly, this dark strain in his personality proved to be prophetic: at forty-four, he was killed in a freak bicycle accident just as he was reaching his height as a composer.

Like many Frenchman of his era, Chausson fell for many years under the spell of Wagner and visited Bayreuth several times. Yet by the late 1880s when he began composing his unusual Concert for Piano, Violin, and String Quartet, he was trying to shake-off the influence of “the red spectre of Wagner which does not let me go” and turning to the French Baroque composers Couperin and Rameau for a purer, more classical, and more “French” style.

Even the use of the word “concert” for this work was borrowed from Couperin. Though it uses six players, it is definitely not a sextet, for the members of the ensemble are treated differently. The piano and solo violin take the lead throughout in music that is highly virtuosic in conception; Chausson described their roles as “projections against the quartet background.” The Concert reflects a sometimes conflicting mixture of influences—Wagnerian chromaticism and endless, unrestrained melody vs. a French sensibility for instrumental and harmonic color and rhythmic bite.

Chausson was always a slow and meticulous creator, and he spent two years, 1889 to 1891, crafting this work. Its inspiration and dedicatee was the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who premiered it with his quartet in Brussels on March 4, 1892. Giving-in to his habitual pessimism, Chausson had dismissed the work as a “failure” after completing it; in fact, it was rapturously received at its premiere and at its subsequent introduction in Paris. The surprised composer allowed himself a moment of rejoicing. “Never have I had such a great success,” he wrote Ysaÿe. “I scarcely know myself since my return from Brussels. I have never been so lighthearted and happy, and I cannot think of you all without emotion.”

Following the cyclical form favored by Chausson’s mentor Franck, the expansive first movement all flows from a motto of three stentorian chords proclaimed in octaves by the piano. The quartet immediately turns them into a melancholy theme, and when the solo violin enters, it further expands this into soaring song, colored by the chromaticism Chausson had adopted from Wagner. A calm transition in the piano leads to the second theme, a yearning, sumptuously lyrical melody carried by the solo violin above the quartet and the piano’s lavish arpeggios. At the movement’s midpoint, the three-chord motto makes a strong return and ushers in a new variant of the opening theme led by the piano and eventually the solo violin and concluding in a brief cadenza. A recapitulation of the motto’s original melody by the piano and violin is saluted by uprushing scales in the quartet; it also includes a return of the second theme, now more ecstatic than before. A quietly beautiful coda sends the violin up to a floating high D as the piano and quartet murmur the motto.

After the Wagnerian lushness of the first movement, the second is all French delicacy with the Italian touch that is a rocking Sicilienne in A Minor inspired by that pastoral dance style. Here Chausson achieves his perfect balance between the three performing components with the quartet’s solo violin sometimes soaring above and taking-over the melody from the solo violin. Adélaïde de Place numbers it among the composer’s most beautiful pages.

Over the chromatically creeping line of the piano, the solo violin leads off the Grave third movement with a lamenting F-Minor melody, slowly rocking with inner pain. The quartet assents to this mood with solemn chords, then the violin and quartet launch a slightly more animated theme over the piano’s extravagant arpeggios; this, in fact, is a variation of the motto theme from movement one. Chausson eventually transforms it into a loud, passionate declaration by all the instruments before returning to the opening lament, now also loud and protesting. Over the piano’s chromatic creeping, the music fades away in exhaustion at the top of the strings.

The Très animé finale is a grand reminiscence of themes we’ve heard before, here in new guises. The piano opens with a lively theme of syncopated rhythms. It also proposes a more relaxed ascending theme shared with the solo violin. The violin then carries this into a more lyrical and less anguished variant of the third movement’s lamenting theme. A virtuoso return of the syncopated theme also brings back the work’s solemn motto theme in the quartet’s viola and cello. The violin and quartet cry-out the third movement’s motto-based second theme as well. The rush to the finish line is a whirlwind of virtuosity not only for the piano and violin but also for the quartet, offering one final proclamation of the motto theme.

Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012