Tune in all this week at 1pm as we celebrate the legacy of the French composer and pianist Cécile Chaminade in honor of her 167th birthday.
Highly respected in her day by her contemporaries such as Ambroise Thamas, Camille Saint- Saens and Charles Gounod, Chaminade enjoyed a great deal of success in her lifetime. She was the first women composer to receive The National Order of the Legion of Honor medal by the French government and would go on to receive many accolades throughout her life. Sadly, her music would fall into obscurity in the second half of the twentieth century.
Today her Flute Concertino, is the only piece that receives regular performance, but she wrote a great deal of excellent music. Explore her fantastic compositional world all this week in the 1pm hour.
Tuesday August 6: Op. 11 Piano Trio No. 1 in G minor (1881)
Written when Chaminade was just twenty-three years old, the first piano trio, has an affinity with the chamber music of Faure, but also shows a verry clear influence of the music of Brahms and Schumann.
Although written in the key of G minor, Chaminade uses the key to create a feeling of charm and melancholy thought-out the work, rather than drama or angst.
It is thought that the work would have been premiered at a concert put on by the Société nationale de musique. This was a society whose sole aim was to promote French music. It was formed as a direct result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The thinking was French music should be championed. This plus the defeat of France made the dominance of German music on concert programs intolerable to many French citizens. Founding members of the group included Faure, Saint-Saens, Theodore Dubois, and Jules Massenet.
Wednesday, August 7: Op. 21 Piano Sonata in C minor (1893)
Dedicated to her brother-in-law, the composer and pianist Moritz Moszkowski, Chaminade’s only piano sonata was written at a time when she was still trying to endear herself and her compositions to the Parisian artistic elite.
Chaminade was making a name for herself as a piano virtuoso by performing her own compositions in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland. This piano sonata demonstrates Chaminade's virtuosity and flair at the piano and would certainly have been performed while she was on concert tours.
The sonata is written in a romantic style. In the first movement, the harmonies are lush, but there are motives and themes that look back towards composers such as Beethoven and Bach. The final movement has the virtuosity of Brahm’s piano music.
Thursday, August 8: Op. 34 Piano Trio No. 2 in A minor (1887)
Dedicated to the French cellist Jules Delsart, the second piano trio was premiered in Paris with Delsart on cello and Chaminade at the piano. There is no record of who the violinist was, but this piano trio furthered Chaminade’s reputation around Paris as a serious composer of chamber music.
If the first piano trio is full of melancholy and charm, this second trio, also in a minor key explores the stormier and passionate side of Chaminade’s character.
The first movement is dominated by scale passages, has a thrusting muscular quality but also an austere, dark, and brooding nobility. There are also two dramatic sections in the first movement that help add to the angst-filled passion of the trio. The second movement has a very lush vocal quality, that shows the impact of Chaminade's studies with Benjamin Goddard. The final movement returns to the tension filled passionate character of the first movement.
Friday, August 9: Op. 40 Concertstück in C-sharp minor for piano and orchestra (1888)
The Concertstück was the only work Chaminade composed for piano and orchestra. It was first performed in a concert put on by the Cercle catholique in Antwerp on 18 April 1888, with Chaminade herself as the soloist. In the following year she performed the work in Paris where it was received with enthusiasm. That same year, the Concertstück was played at the Concerts Colonne by the pianist Louise Steiger, to whom Chaminade dedicated the work on the published score.
For several years it appeared quite regularly on concert programs in Paris and beyond, including a performance at St James’s Hall in London on 23 June 1892. Two decades later, during an American tour in 1908, Chaminade played the Concertstück with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Karl Pohlig, its music director at the time.
Over the course of the single movement, lasting fifteen minutes, Chaminade develops four main themes in a language that is unambiguously French, with echoes of Saint-Saëns and Bizet, and a liking for ‘exotic’ harmonies. The orchestration is brilliantly effective. The result is a piece that combines zestful energy with rich lyrical melodies.