Donna Voce Volume 3 = Concerti & Piano Works, by Clara Schumann, Cécile Chamimade – Anna Shelest, Dmitri Shelest, Neeme Jarvi, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra – Music&Arts MA-1310 (76:15, detailed listing below)
Recorded in succeeding Junes of 2023 and 2024, this third installment of the “Donna Voce” series extends the conscientious attentions devoted to female composers; here, Clara Schumann 1819-1896) and Cécile Chamimade (1857-1944). Both of these women combined active, concert lives as touring virtuosos with a strong gift for musical composition; though in the case of Clara Schumann, her efforts consistently suffered encroachments from self-doubt, exacerbated by the male prejudices of her era. Chaminade embraced, rather deliberately, a salon aesthetic that favored small, melodically poignant pieces in a Romantic style. While her creative taste assured her a high degree of popular appeal, it dissipated significantly after WW I, and she fell into relative obscurity, which is only now enjoying a renaissance.
Clara Schumann’s one major piece for piano and orchestra, her A Minor Concerto, came about while she was in her teens, between 1833-1836, and appeared in the form of a one-movement Concertstueck, actually what became the full-fledged Concerto’s last movement. Neeme Jarvi and his Estonian ensemble open the proceedings with a fanfare, Allegro maestoso, whose melodic material infiltrates the entire, three-movement work, played with neither pauses nor cadenzas. The piano entry resounds with elements of both Chopin and Liszt, florid and harmonically adventurous, with brief excursions into A-flat, F minor, and E major, veering off into a hybrid-variation format that eschews a recapitulation. Anna Shelest’s keyboard ripples and thunders alternately as the music progresses with little regard to sonata structure, even anticipating the second movement with a cello interlude before the movement abruptly breaks off.
At that point, an ascending scale takes us into the lovely Romanze, marked Andante non troppo con grazia for solo piano until the principal cello (Indrek Leivategija) joins in for a duo “song without words” in A-flat that anticipates the later Brahms B-flat Concerto’s third movement. Soft timpani and trumpets announce the volatile Finale: Allegro non troppo – Allegro molto last movement. The brilliant style of the movement suggests a lavish polonaise in the Chopin bravura manner, rife with timpanic punctuations at key moments. The motor energy of the writing cannot help but be infectious, the color elements from the orchestra winds and strings – the orchestration courtesy of inamorata Robert Schumann – integrated suavely into the fertile mix, ending with a resplendent, aggressive coda.
The Quatre Pieces Fugitives of 1843 bespeak the expression of a married woman who tries to balance an active domestic life with fleeting moments for composition. The opening Larghetto sets an intimate, thoughtful tone, indulging in legato and parlando periods. Un Poco Agitato presents busy, shifting figures, mostly staccato. The mood darkens temporarily, still flighty in a Mendelssohn imitation. The relatively long Andante Espressivo casts a somber shadow, with some sojourns into the keyboard’s lower range, but the mood becomes more expansive with flowing scales and arpeggios. The mood shifts again, almost in the manner of an intermezzo, marcato and parlando, built on short, parallel phrases. The coda allows the flowing temper of the piece to say that last word. The fourth piece, Scherzo, Schumann had composed earlier, and she would include it in her G Minor Sonata. Husband Robert praised the set as “more tenderly and musically conceived than any she has succeeded in doing before.”
Shelest concludes the Schumann group with the Impromptu in E Major (c. 1844) published in 1886 for a collection, Album du Galois, organized by Arthur Meyer along the lines of Diabelli, asking composers to submit 61 unpublished works. Schumann’s contribution rather glitters in salon style, indulging the right hand’s singing capacities. A moment of passion erupts late, returning to the charming glitter, much in anticipation of early, romantic Debussy.
The catalogue of Cécile Chaminade boasts some 400 opera, of which half are piano works in the form of light, often balletic, French-style character pieces. Her innate grace and tenderness remain in a conservative, harmonic syntax, though we find color elements traceable to Wagner and Liszt. Besides her Concertstück in C# Minor, Op. 40 (1888), her other large composition is her Piano Sonata, Op. 21, written in conventional, three-movement form. The death of her father in 1887, with the subsequent loss of financial security, forced Chaminade to market small melodies and character studies that imitate Chopin and Schumann.
The highly virtuosic Concertstück became, however,an immediate and lucrative success, given its exploitation of Spanish-style rhythms and exotic harmonies, and its aggressively demanding technical resources. A Wagnerian flair marks the opening pages of the piece, the open-fifth orchestra tremolos reminiscent of The Flying Dutchman, while the piano indulges in stormy arpeggios that sweep across the keyboard. Chaminade introduces four themes, presented much in the manner of Chopin’s Concerto in E Minor, Op. 11. In a typically Romantic maneuver, Chaminade utilizes the enharmonic D-flat major to conclude the work. The second half, marked Allegro, enjoys witty flourishes, melodic grace, and shifts of (polyrhythmic) pulse that recall the antics of Saint-Saens. The use of triplets in various permutations create glissando, capriccio effects in septuplets that rather dazzle the listener. Shelest and Jarvi collaborate in a performance of dashing wit and panache, a real tour de force for all participants.
Husband Dmitri joins Anna Shelest for the six selections that comprise the Romantic Pieces for Piano, four hands. The first, Primavera, sounds like a sentimental clone from Fauré’s Dolly Suite. Hasty activity marks the second piece, La chaise a porteurs, colored by pentatonic scales. Idyllic arabe extends the oriental conceit, the gentle colors rocking in arpeggiated and staccato cascades. Sérénade d’automne casts a misty veil, a balletic dance that might have emerged from a musical-box. Its middle section has something of the Paris dance hall, a moment from Toulouse Lautrec. Danse hindoue may nod of Rimsky-Korsakov, but its means remain strictly moto perpetuo in bravura fashion, a whirling dervish, dazzling in execution. The final work, Rigaudon, reveals Chaminade’s persistent fascination with antique, Baroque forms. The galanterie here presented enjoys a courtly, regal bearing, both delicately charming and vigorous, at once.
—Gary Lemco
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Donna Voce Volume 3 = Piano Works by Clara Schumann, Cécile Chamimade
Clara Schumann
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7;
Quatre Pieces fugitives, Op. 15;
Impromptu in E Major;
Cécile Chaminade:
Concertstuecke for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 40;
Arabesque No. 1, Op. 61;
Autrefois, Op. 87;
Arlequine, Op. 53;
Scarf Dance, Op. 37;
Solitude, Op. 127, No. 2;
Le Passé, Op. 127. No 3;
Pieces Romantiques for piano, 4 hands, Op. 55
Dmitri Shelest, piano
Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/ Neeme Jarv conductor
