Czech Chamber Music Society • Pražák Quartet & Jiří Vodička

French composer Darius Milhaud was born in Marseille and grew up in Aix-en-Provence. In his memoirs from 1949 he introduced himself as “Je suis un Français de Provence et de religion israélite.” (“I am a Frenchman from Provence, and by religion a Jew.”) His father was a businessman, but also a skilled pianist who played a significant role in local cultural life; his mother, from a family of Sephardic Jews in Italy, was a wonderful singer. Little Darius began to study the violin and at 12 he was playing in an amateur string quartet. He admitted that the music by Claude Debussy was a complete revelation for him, which led to his decision to pursue music professionally. In 1909, Milhaud entered the Paris Conservatory, became enthusiastic about the Symbolists Maurice Maeterlinck, André Gide, and the Impressionists, and absorbed a wide variety of musical stimuli which he encountered in the performances of Stravinsky’s ballets Petrushka and the scandalous premiere of his Rite of Spring, as well as in the discovery of Arnold Schoenberg’s first atonal works. In 1912 he met Paul Claudel, with whom he sought to create a new concept of musical drama. (Claudel had a career in the diplomatic service for 30 years. Milhaud later became his secretary in Brazil and subsequently integrated elements of Brazilian folk tunes into his music.)

In 1918, a group of composers, who later became known as “Les Six”, appeared in a small theater in Paris. Its members – Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and the only woman among them, Germaine Taillefere – did not establish any common aesthetic program. They were connected by their ostentatious rejection of Neo-Romanticism and their fascination with the music of nightclubs and cabarets, variety shows, the circus and the new dance music imported from America. Soon each went his own way, but “Les Six” of Paris brought new impulses to the whole of Europe. Milhaud presented himself in person in Czechoslovakia on 2 April 1933 as pianist at a concert of the Czech Chamber Music Society, where he performed his Suite Concertante for Piano and String Quartet and several piano pieces with the Prague Quartet, and on 5 April with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra as conductor of his own works. He came to Prague for the second time in 1966 as a guest of the Prague Spring Festival to give the world premiere of his Musique pour Prague.

Milhaud’s compositional legacy comprises over 400 opuses of all genres as well as many works without opus numbers. His music scored for chamber ensembles includes 18 string quartets composed between 1912 and 1950. These quartets document Milhaud’s stylistic evolution over the course of time from the first quartet arising from Romanticism to the more elaborate structures of the later quartets. String Quartet No. 1, Op. 5, dedicated to Paul Cézanne, is in the traditional form of four movements. The main feature of the lively outer movements is the rhythmic component, while the inner slow movements are dominated by melody. The influence of Claude Debussy is evident in the timbre of the sound. In 1950 Milhaud revised the work and eliminated the third movement.

Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, the only string quartet he has written, came into being in the years 1892–1893 during the period in which he composed his symphonic poem Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) after Stéphane Mallarmé. While with the symphonic poem he has opened a new, modern phase in music, with the string quartet he appeals to the Classical-Romantic heritage both in the four-movement form of the quartet and in the structure of its individual movements. The first movement is in sonata form in which the main motif appears in variations. The following movement is a scherzo with a trio. The third slow movement is sometimes described as a melancholic nocturne, and for the final movement the composer has chosen the sonata rondo form. Nevertheless, the composition brings innovation. The core of the main motif, for example, appears in variation in the second movement as well, and the tonal material is enriched with ecclesiastical modes, influences of the music of the Orient and other inspirations.

The quartet was premiered by the Ysaÿe Quartet on 29 December 1893 in Paris, but it was not received very enthusiastically. The second performance of this work was given by the Ysaÿe Quartet on 4 March 1894 in Brussels at a concert featuring Debussy’s latest works. “All these creations were of such kind that even our self-proclaimed progressives found them too daring,” a reviewer remarked. Audiences had not yet fully understood Debussy’s musical language, but he was appreciated by his fellow musicians such as, in addition to Eugène Ysaÿe, Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson and Paul Dukas, who wrote about him at the time: “Debussy is one of the most original members of the younger generation who do not see music as a means of expressing emotion, but for whom the goal is emotion itself.”

The Société nationale de musique was established in 1871 in Paris by the composer Camille Saint-Saëns and the professor of singing Romain Bussine, among others. Its founding was a result of nationalist sentiments after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Although initially the aims of this society were met with distrust and the connection between music and politics was rejected, it greatly contributed to the emergence of a young artistic generation as well as the promotion of genres hitherto neglected by French composers, including chamber music. In 1886, Ernest Chausson became secretary of the society. He had originally studied law, but his acquaintance with César Franck and his impressions of a visit to Wagner’s Bayreuth made him take the path of music.

Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Op. 21 is interesting because of its unconventional combination of instruments. The violin part was written for the above-mentioned Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The accompaniment of a concertante piece by a chamber ensemble instead of an orchestra had its model in the music of earlier periods, but at the same time Chausson was pointing towards a new era when composers often resorted to smaller ensembles for practical reasons because it gave them the hope of a performance without having to negotiate with orchestras and, above all, of a performance less costly.

The concerto was premiered on 4 March 1892 in Brussels by the Quatuor Crickboom with Ysaÿe taking the solo violin part and Auguste Pierret at the piano. A few months later the work was performed at a concert of the Société nationale de musique in Paris. The first movement is dominated by a theme whose development is sometimes compared to the “idée fixe” of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. The dance movement Sicilienne refers to music of earlier periods, while the following Grave is characterized by a chromatic melodic line. The final lively movement employs reminiscences of the material from the preceding movements.

The international career of the French pianist François Dumont was launched by successes at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, the Clara Haskil Competition, and the Monte Carlo Piano Masters Competition. Since then, he has been making solo appearances all around the world with such ensembles as the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and he has been invited to international festivals such as the Festival International de la Roque dʼAnthéron and Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse. He has also appeared on stage at Vienna’s Musikverein, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and the Kennedy Center in Washington. He performs regularly in China, Japan, and South Korea.

His recording of Ravel’s two piano concertos with the Orchestre National de Lyon led by Leonard Slatkin for the Naxos label met with great critical acclaim. Dumont has long been devoting himself to Ravel, having recorded his complete works for piano. His discography also includes Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, the complete piano trios of Beethoven and Schubert, three albums of Chopin and two of Bach, and a special recording of Fauré’s Nocturnes on a period piano. With the Orchestre National de Bretagne, he is recording the piano concertos of W. A. Mozart, conducting from the keyboard.

There is no lack of chamber music appearances on Dumont’s busy calendar. Besides playing with the Pražák Quartet, he also appears frequently with the Voce Quartet, for example, and with such musicians as Sayaka Shoji, Marc Coppey, Augustin Dumay, and Laurent Korcia. With his wife, the soprano Helen Kearns, he is discovering the Lieder repertoire, and he also has close ties to contemporary music, working actively with the composers Nicolas Bacri, Pascal Dusapin, Sophie Lacaze, and Tristan Murail.

A native of Lyon, he first studied in the city of his birth under the pianists Pascale Imbert and Chrystel Saussac, then under Hervé Billaut and later at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique under Bruno Rigutto. Thereafter, he continued his training at the International Piano Academy at Lake Como and at the Lieven Piano Foundation. He is now passing his knowledge on to piano students at the Haute École de Musique de Genève and at masterclasses in Europe and Japan.