Chair of the UW piano program presents a program of works by French composers, including Fauré’s 6th Nocturne, Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, Joël-François Durand’s Enfance: Quatre Tableaux, and works by Ravel, including Miroirs, and the two-piano version of La Valse. With guest pianist (and former student of Sheppard) ZeZe Xue.
Program
Nocturne, Opus 63 #6 in D flat (1894) - Gabriel Fauré
(1845-1924)
Enfance : Quatre Tableaux (Four Scenes of Childhood -2015) - Joël-François Durand (b. 1954)
Jeux (Games)
Rêves (Dreams)
Bataille (A Fight)
Les voyants (The Clairvoyants)
Prélude, Choral et Fugue (1884) - César Franck (1822-1890)
INTERMISSION
Miroirs (Mirrors - 1904-05) - Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Noctuelles (Night moths)
Oiseaux tristes (Sad birds)
Une barque sur l’océan (A boat on the ocean)
Alborada del gracioso (The court fool at dawn)
La vallée des cloches (The valley of bells)
La Valse (two-piano version – 1919-20)
with ZEZE XUE
Program Notes
This is the first all-French program that I’ve given in Meany since 2013, when I performed Debussy’s Études, Estampes, and Images I and II. The previous year, I had performed the two books of Debussy Préludes. For the present program, it has been fun to return after fifty-five years to my first (and only performances to date) of the Fauré Nocturne. Joël-François Durand’s Enfance is new to me, as is the Franck Prélude, Choral et Fugue. I performed Ravel’s Miroirs here in 2000, and I’ve done the two-piano version of La Valse more recently with my colleague, Robin McCabe, playing secondo piano. Tonight, with my former student, the brilliant ZeZe Xue, I will be playing primo piano, and thus will be able to say that I’ve finally learned the whole piece!
The Nocturne in D flat of Opus 63 is one of Gabriel Fauré’s most enduring works for solo piano. The legendary pianist, Alfred Cortot, waxed lyrical about it, as did Aaron Copland and, more recently, the well known piano critic, Bryce Morrison. The breadth and dignity of the opening theme is juxtaposed with a syncopated recitativo section, and intense harmonies portray recurring outpourings of passion throughout. The work comes full circle at the end - quietly, tenderly, and at peace.
Joel-François Durand’s Enfance is a delightful set of four pieces. In the first, Jeux, two kids are at play, each with an equal voice. They listen to one another, they cajole one another, they bicker, and in the end, they fight, until the lower voice has simply ‘had it’ and jumps to the lowest register of the piano. The upper voice follows, and they continue fighting until the lights go out! The dream world in Rêves is full of non-sequiturs, thoughts not quite completing themselves, minute variations in chordal progressions lending an uneasy feeling. Bataille brings the two kids back into battle, each one spouting seven-syllable iterations in major and minor seconds, all based on the well-known French nursery rhyme Ah! Vous dirai-je maman. The insistence in the upper voice is challenged by nagging staccati in the lower voice. The two voices begin to interrupt each other in sycopation, getting louder and faster as they grow further apart. Les voyants is a study in fleeting color, much of it in the upper register. A recurring D in the sixth octave mesmerizes the listener, and chordal anxiety at the end rises out of the mists.
César Franck was Belgian by birth and lived most of his life in Paris. Although trained as a pianist, he was better known as an organist and was associated for years with Sainte-Clotilde, a cathedral not far from the Invalides in the seventh arrondissement. The magnificent three-manual Cavaillé-Cort organ at Sainte-Clotilde undoubtedly played a role in his defining work for solo piano, the Prélude, Choral et Fugue of 1884, a period which also gave us his Variations symphoniques for piano and orchestra (1885) and the famous violin-piano sonata of 1886. The Prélude, Choral et Fugue includes many pages of improvisation for which Franck was well known. The grandeur of church music is heard in the chorale, the falling seconds in the fugue are redolent of moments in the great B minor Mass of J.S. Bach, and the combination of the opening and fugal themes in the final pages, orchestral in scope, might well have been inspired by the organ at Sainte-Clotilde’s. The dies irae is close at hand throughout, as is the augmented fourth, diavolus in musica. The work represents a stirring and intensely passionate monument to both the Baroque and the late Romantic.
Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy had an intense, if unrecognized, rivalry in the early years of the twentieth century. It is probably no coincidence that Miroirs appeared during the same decade as Debussy’s Estampes and Images I and II, although it is not for us to judge who ‘got there first’. Both were phenomenal colorists with enormous imaginations. Each of the tonal poems in Miroirs was dedicated to a different friend in his group of ‘artistic outcasts’ (their own description!) known as Les Apaches. Who can forget the Noctuelles flitting about, falling momentarily to the ground, subdued and sad but not defeated, then managing to revive themselves and flitting about a second time before vanishing into the night air? It is said that Oiseaux tristes was inspired by a blackbird at dawn in a forest close to Ravel’s house. The birds are frightened momentarily by an unknown source, then settle back into their mournful song. Une barque sur l’océan starts out benignly, but this boat must be pretty strong to withstand the intense storms at sea that are heard intermittently. Between storms, a distant voice cries out ‘Is anyone there?’ The work finishes with the same calm as it starts. Alborada del gracioso shows the Spanish court jester at his most capricious, a wild dancer at daybreak whose energy is both rigorous and boundless. La vallée des cloches juxtaposes layers of sound echoing from the surrounding hills, frequently through a shroud of mist.
La Valse was written at the end of World War I, during which Ravel lost several close friends. At times, it mirrors the cataclysm of the war itself and the collapse of the Old Order. It might also represent a night of debauchery, during which the guests become irremediably drunk and out of control. Perhaps it represents both. This is for the listener to decide!
—Program notes copyright Craig Sheppard 2025.