Vers la source dans le bois: French music for harp, flute and bassoon
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)
Deux interludes en trio (1945)
Marcel Tournier (1879-1951)
Vers la source dans le bois (1921)
Eugene Bozza (1905-1991)
Sonatine à Monsieur Jacques Ibert, for flute and bassoon (1938)
André Jolivet (1905-1974)
Pastoral de Noël en trio (1957)
Alexandre Luigini (1850-1906)
Rêve bleu, for harp
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Sonatine en trio (c.1905 (arr. by Carlos Salzedo c. 1913)
Arisoso Furioso Trio
rec. 2019, Preganziol, Italy.
Da Vinci Classics C00472 [73]

Although I wouldn’t claim that this is an exceptionally valuable disc, I do regard it as a thoroughly interesting and pleasing one.

It is made up of chamber music (including two pieces for solo harp and one for just flute and bassoon) by French composers of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, played by an accomplished Italian trio. For me, the two highlights are the work which provides the disc’s title, Marcel Tournier’s piece for solo harp, Vers la source dans le bois and the work which closes the disc, Carlos Salzedo’s ‘Sonatine en trio’, his arrangement for harp, flute and bassoon of Ravel’s Sonatine for piano.

I have long been fond of Ravel’s Sonatine. I can be precise about when that fondness began. During my student days (now more than half a century in the past), one of the people with whom I shared a student house at one point, was a good amateur pianist, sadly now deceased. He was reading history rather than music, but his skill as a pianist was very real. In one of the three terms during which we were housemates he spent many hours practising the Ravel Sonatine and as a by-product of his fascination with the Sonatine, I too got to know, and came to love, the piece. Its three short movements – ‘Modéré’, ‘Mouvement de menuet’ and ‘Animé’ – are models of elegance and lucidity. Rollo H. Myers (Ravel, Life and Work, 1960) observes of the Sonatine that it is “exquisitely wrought and impregnated with the nostalgic fragrance of some old forgotten potpourri” (p.34) and though his language now perhaps strikes us as excessively fanciful, there is an important truth within his words.

A long-lasting fondness for a work is not always good preparation for hearing an arrangement of it for a different instrument (or instruments), since one’s ears and mind are wedded to the colours of the original. I can remember having a slight feeling of trepidation when, some 10 or 15 years later a different friend offered to play me a recording of this arrangement by Carlos Salzedo (which I hadn’t previously heard). However, I was charmed by what Salzedo had done with Ravel’s music, how sympathetically he had treated his harmonic language and his rhythms, responding both to the classical traditions which underpin Ravel’s Sonatine and to the distinctively ‘modern’ elements in Ravel’s writing.

Had I, at the time, known more about Salzedo’s own playing and writing, I would not have been so surprised to discover how successful his arrangement of the Ravel was. Salzedo’s importance in shaping the approach to the harp in the early years of the twentieth century was very much bound up with the way in which by 1910 he was composing works for the harp “whose harmonic language recalls Ravel and impressionistic influences” (Shelley Batt Archambo, Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961): The Harp in Transition, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Kansas, 1094, p.47).

Later still, I discovered, reassuringly, that Ravel himself apparently liked the arrangement, according to a delightful anecdote (though I cannot vouch for its authenticity or pin down its ultimate source). I quote it from one modern citation: “Whenever possible it was Salzedo’s custom to have composers hear his transcriptions of their works. In the case of the Sonatine by Ravel, Viola Gramm Salzedo provided the following account: Shortly before World War I the Trio de Lutece, Georges Barrere, Carlos Salzedo, Paul Kefer, was concertizing in the British Isles. Salzedo wrote to Ravel telling him about the transcription of the Sonatine for flute, harp and cello, also saying he would like Ravel to hear it and give his opinion. Soon after this, the Trio de Lutece went to Paris and in the Salle Gaveau, with Ravel as audience, played the Sonatine en Trio. Upon the conclusion of this performance Ravel’s comment was: ‘Now why didn’t I think of that!’” (www.justflutes.com/shop/product/sonatine-en-trio-maurice-ravel). Viola Gramm was the harpist’s first wife and was, it seems, the source of this story.

Salzedo’s arrangement respects the attractive (and structurally functional) repeated motifs of Ravel’s score, such as the descending fourth in the opening of the first movement, which recurs in both of the succeeding movements. As in the original, the two outer movements begin in in F♯ minor and end in F♯ major, while the central movement (a minuet without a trio section) is in  D♭ major. The performance by the Arioso Furioso Trio captures the elegance of the first movement very attractively and communicates much of its affectionate nostalgia for the music of an earlier age. In the middle movement the rhythmic sway of the minuet is articulated very pleasantly, but I have heard other performances which invest some passages with more intense emotion than is to be heard here. Overall, however, this is an enjoyable account of Salzedo’s excellent arrangement of Ravel’s Sonatine.

I can’t remember having heard Marcel Tournier’s Vers la source dans le bois before. Tournier was a French harpist-composer and teacher of the harp. From the age of 16 he studied the instrument at the Paris Conservatoire with Alphonse Hasselmans (1845-1912). On Hasselmans’ death, Tournier succeeded him as Professor of Harp at the Conservatoire. Like Salzedo – though to a lesser extent – he extended the language (and techniques) of music for the harp and wrote a substantial body of work for solo harp, some of which I have previously heard – such as his Sonatine for Harp, Op. 30 (1924) and Au Matin (1913). My curiosity aroused by Vers la source dans le bois, I searched for and read a doctoral dissertation, The Life of Marcel Tournier and a Guide to the Performance Practices of His Music (University of Toronto, 2015) by Angela Schwarzkopf (now a harpist and teacher based in Toronto) and found it scholarly and illuminating; I recommend it to those who, like me, want(ed) to find out more about Tournier.

By the time that he wrote Vers la source dans le bois in 1921 Tournier had, like Salzedo, absorbed something of that early twentieth-century French music which has, rightly or wrongly, come to be called ‘impressionism’ by some. In this piece the depiction of water and its movement, and how these are perceived by a walker in the woods as (s)he comes closer to its source, is to some extent achieved through Tournier’s use of glissandi, repeated notes and ostinato patterns very well-conceived in terms of the harp. The introductory five bars immediately evoke the fluidity of water, heard rather than seen, of course. There is an exposition of more complex motifs in bars 6-20, which are developed in the twenty bars which follow and recapitulated in bars 41/2-61. The work closes with a coda of seven bars. In a work so much concerned with fluidity and its representation one might divide the work slightly differently, no doubt. However, I think it is fair to see the work as having three main sections, exposition, development and recapitulation, preceded by an introduction and succeeded by a coda of approximately equal length to that introduction.

Interestingly, so far as I can see from a score accessed online, Tournier provides no clear tempo marking in the introductory bars, as if he wants the performer to imagine the bubbling up of water out of the ground as something wholly organic and natural, rather than it being represented by any kind of strict tempo. From around bar 23 the tempo is clearly marked and becomes more regular, though the score still allows for a degree of personal interpretation.

This interplay between freedom and constraint seems to me to be central to the work – a series of ‘impressions’ being presented, as the performer metaphorically/imaginatively moves slowly nearer to the source of the woodland stream.

Angela Schwarzkopf, in the dissertation cited earlier, quotes (p.133) some of Tournier’s own comments on this work: “In this piece we are in full dream-state, in a full poetic fairyland. Only the harp can idealize so intensely (by means of repeated notes) the murmur of this marvellous creek, from which seems to pour out the call of a mysterious horn that irresistibly attracts us.” Harpist Francesca Tirale conjures up a good deal of magic in her interpretation of Vers la source dans le bois, in part because of the dynamic range in the performance (the specifications in the score range from ppp to ff), which helps to evoke the imagined experience of the walker in the wood, the sound of the spring sometimes being very clear and at other times shrouded by the trees and their noises.

Of the other works which make up this programme none are as powerfully attractive as the two discussed above, but all are pleasant, well-written pieces. The most intriguing of them, to my ears, is André Jolivet’s Pastorale de Noël en Trio. This was written in 1943, in occupied France. Its four movements – ‘L’Étoile’, ‘Les Mages’, ‘La Vierge et L’Enfant’ and ‘Entrée et danse des Bergeres’ – evoke, as their titles suggest, scenes from the story of the Nativity. With the partial exception of the last movement, this is essentially an uncomplicated piece of work, a tender and affectionate statement of faith, with the kind of unaffected charm one sometimes encounters in wayside shrines in Italy, any hint of sentimentality outweighed by an innate dignity. ‘L’Étoile’ is dominated by a conversation between flute and bassoon, while ‘La Vierge et L’Enfant’ is very simple, especially in terms of harmony, just three chords providing the movement’s harmonic basis. Things do, though, get rather more complex in the closing movement, ‘‘Entrée et danse des Bergeres’, fittingly enough; as we move from the Virgin and the infant Jesus to the thoroughly human shepherds, whose dance of devotion has more than a little of folk traditions about it, embodied in unexpected accents and, in comparison with the preceding movements, more complex rhythms. This is hardly a major work, but it speaks enchantingly of simple faith.

Whatever else may be the case, I always approach a composition by Jacques Ibert confident that it will, at the very least, be well-crafted. The ‘Deux Interludes’ which open this disc certainly don’t disappoint in that respect. Each of the two pieces – ‘Andante espressivo’ and ‘Allegro’ – is some four minutes long. The two pieces have their origins in incidental music Ibert wrote in the 1940s for a play, La Burlador by Suzanne Lilar. I don’t know the play, but a Professor of French amongst my friends tells me that it offers a kind of feminist perspective on the Don Juan story. The earliest known play about Don Juan, so far as I know, is El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de Piedra (c.1630) by Tirso de Molina. In Spanish the word burlador means a trickster and perhaps Lilar intended a direct allusion to this play in her choice of title. The first interlude is a sophisticated minuet, its sophistication decidedly French, its implied view of the relationship between man and woman formalised and ‘romantic’. It confirms its ‘Frenchness’ with an allusion to Ibert’s Flute Concerto of 1932. The second interlude is more Spanish in character, the writing for the harp occasionally reminiscent of flamenco guitar and its implicit attitude to the relationship between the sexes less idealistic and more down-to-earth. Unfortunately, this interpretation by the Arioso Furioso Trio is somewhat under characterised; it is their one relatively weak performance on the disc.

Eugene Bozza, originally a violinist, then a composer and a conductor, is perhaps best remembered nowadays for the music he wrote for wind ensembles. He was, however, a prolific composer in many genres – his output included four symphonies, three operas, concertos for piano, violin and saxophone, as well as three oratorios and a substantial body of chamber music. His Sonatine à Monsieur Jacques Ibert, a duo for flute and bassoon, is in three movements – Allegro, Andantino, Vif. It is, like everything by Bozza that I have heard (which amounts to only a small fraction of all that he wrote!) is a thoroughly competent piece, which juxtaposes the two instruments intelligently and entertainingly. The opening movement is delightful, with its striking sense of instrumental conversation. The slow movement which follows is, however, somewhat less inventive. The closing movement is full of energy and celebration. This work must, I suspect, be fairly difficult to play, with its use of the full range of both instruments and its many rapid runs. Flautist Massimiliano Pezzotti and bassoonist Francesco Fontola are faultless and make a persuasive case for this Sonatine.

The one work on this disc which I have not yet mentioned is Rêve bleu by Alexandre Luigini. I can’t recall ever hearing any music by Luigini, but I have come across his name from time to time, mostly in connection with that of Massenet, the premiere of whose Cendrillon Luigini conducted in 1899. From various reference works I have learned that he was born in Lyon, the child of a family whose origins lay in the Italian city of Modena. Both his grandfather and his father (Joseph) played in the orchestra of Lyon’s Grand Théâtre, Joseph becoming the orchestra’s conductor. The young Alexandre studied violin at the Conservatoire in Lyon and then at the Paris Conservatoire. Returning to Lyon early in the 1870s he first became a violinist in the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre and then, in turn, its leader and its conductor (in 1877). He also composed a number of works – both ballet scores and operas – for performance in the theatre. In 1879 he was appointed professor of harmony and composition at the Lyon Conservatoire. He continued to work in the city of his birth until, in the 1890s, he became, first assistant conductor and then principal conductor at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. None of the reference works I consulted could, unfortunately, tell me anything about his Rêve bleu – not its date of composition nor whether it was conceived as a stand-alone work or as part of one of his many compositions for the stage. It proves to be pleasant and calmly tranquil – indeed a ‘dreamy’ piece. It is pleasant, but not especially remarkable or memorable, though harpist Francesca Tirale plays it with skill and conviction.

This disc offers over an hour of sophisticated French chamber music, for the most part well played and in good sound.

Glyn Pursglove

Performers
Massimiliano Pezzotti (flute), Francesco Fontola (bassoon), Francesca Tirale (harp)

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