Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/25/2008, uploaded on 12/11/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Heading into the later decades of the 19^th century, opera dominated French musical life to the point of stifling outlets for other forms of music and making it difficult for young composers to attract attention to their own works. Thus, in 1871, Camille Saint-Saëns cofounded the Société Nationale de Musique with the purpose of promoting new French music and increasing the presence of chamber and symphonic music in French culture. With this new outlet open to emerging composers, a younger generation helped reshape the direction of French music. Beginning with Franck and Fauré, new chamber works ushered forth from the pens of these composers and their mantle was in turn taken up by Debussy and Ravel.

Gabriel Fauré produced two piano quartets, separated by some seven years—the first in 1876-79, the second in 1886—and thus both created during the middle part of his career. Each of the two works is an example of Fauré’s inclination towards a Classical restraint and a well-crafted argument, but also of his wholly Romantic melodies and harmonies. The Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor adheres to the Classical four movement design, albeit the Beethovenian model of inverting the Adagio and Scherzo inner movements. The Allegro molto moderato first movement opens with a surging crescendo from the piano that prefaces its lyrical first theme. Despite its beginning G minor tonality, much of the movement glows with an iridescent beauty and it is in the parallel major key that it closes in hushed tones. Shifting to C minor, the Scherzo has an impetuous energy and something of an obsessive quality to its rhythmic drive and motives. In contrast to the Scherzo, the Adagio third movement is quite serene. A memorable motif in the piano, which in ways looks forward to the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, alternates with a lyrical melody, at first given by the viola in the movement’s opening. Lastly, the Allegro molto Finale returns to the key of G minor and opens with a vigorous and bold theme. The argument of this movement is more dramatic than that which opened the work, and with faint echoes of that movement’s theme in a vigorous G major combined with its own, the Finale comes to an exhilarating close.           Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.