French Piano Trios, Vol. 1

Joachim

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Cat No: 8550934

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099593427

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: French Piano Trios, Vol. 1

Description
French Piano Trios Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) Piano Trio in G major Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) Piano Trio in A minor Florent Schmitt (1870 - 1958) Très lent The names of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel have often been coupled, classified together, in spite of the marked difference in their characters and in their musical styles and of a later coolness that sprang up between them, fomented by critics who insisted on comparisons in one way or another invidious. The older of the two, Debussy, was born in 1862, the son of a shop-keeper. In 1872 he entered the Conservatoire, where he eventually abandoned the plan, supported by his generally shiftless father, of becoming a concert pianist, turning his attention to composition. In 1884 he won the Prix de Rome and the following year took up obligatory residence at the Villa Medici in Rome, in accordance with the terms of the prize. By 1887 he was back in Paris, winning his first significant success in 1900 with Nocturnes and going on, two years later, to a succes de scandale with his Maeterlinck opera Pelléas et Mélisande, the importance of which was soon widely acknowledged. Debussy's personal life brought some unhappiness in his first marriage, in 1899, to a mannequin, Lily Texier, after an association of some six years with Gabrielle Dupont. From 1903 he enjoyed a relationship with Emma Bardac, amateur singer and wife of a banker, whom he eventually married in 1908. His final years were darkened by the war and by the cancer that brought about his death in 1918. In 1879 Tchaikovsky's benefactress, the Russian railway widow Nadezhda von Meck, wrote to the Paris Conservatoire, asking for a student from the piano class to serve as a holiday tutor to her daughters. In July 1880 Debussy joined the von Mecks in Switzerland, accompanying them to France and then to the Villa Oppenheim in Florence, where he remained until his necessary return to the Conservatoire at the end of October. The following summer he returned to the family in Moscow and in the summer of 1882 he was again with the von Mecks in Russia, travelling with them to Vienna. The relationship came to an end with Debussy's attempt to secure marriage with one of the von Meck daughters, his pupils. The Premier Trio en Sol, which had no successor, was written for Nadezhda von Meck's house-musicians, the violinist Vladislav Pachulski, who later married her daughter Julia, and the cellist Pyotr Danilchenko, with her typically Parisian and plebeian 'Bussy', in whose work she detected an understandable allegiance to Massenet, as pianist. The Trio was later dedicated to Debussy's teacher Emile Durand, with the words: Beaucoup de notes accompagnées de beau coup d'amitié, offert par l'auteur a son professeur Monsieur Emile Durand. Debussy's Trio is an attractive work, to some extent derivative, as might be expected. It opens with a movement that is developed from the opening piano figure, itself based on the descending
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