Louis Vierne - Chamber Music (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Louis Vierne

CD1

• Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 23
• Rhapsody for harp in G flat minor, Op. 25
• Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 42
• 2 pieces for viola & piano, Op. 5: Le soir

CD2

• 2 pieces for viola & piano, Op. 5: Légende
• Cello Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 27
• Largo & canzonetta, for oboe & piano, Op. 6
• Soirs étrangers for cello & piano, Op. 56
• String Quartet in D minor, Op. 12

François Kerdoncuff & Olivier Gardon, pianos

Alexis Galpérine, violin

Yvan Chiffoleau, cello

Christian Moreaux, oboe

Odile Carracilly, viola

Pascale Zanlonghi, harp

Quatuor Phillips

    Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin

    Jérôme Marchand, violin

    Odile Carracilly, viola

    Henri Demarquette, cello

Date: 1993

Label: Timpani

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Review

When Timpani set about championing a particular composer there are no half measures. Vierne, for too long conveniently organ-lofted has had his complete songs, orchestral music, piano music, chamber music and songs recorded by Timpani. The chamber music and piano music is each accorded a double CD.

Initially issued as 2C2019 in a cumbersome double-width case it now comes in a single slimline double; a good decision. The original included lengthy notes by Jean-Pierre Mazeirat. These are now replaced by a brief and rather non-specific essay by Jean-Philippe Dartevel. If you want the original notes they can be found at the www.timpani-records.com or www.abeillemusique.com sites.

The Violin Sonata is in four movements and the Galpérine/Kerdoncuff team are finely matched with the music as they also were in the Second Violin Sonata of Wilhelm Furtwängler also on Timpani (1C1001). The first of the four movements has all the imperious tumult of the first movement of the Cras Piano Quintet (on Timpani 1C1066). The andante is a moonlit time-pent meditation with adventurous harmony veering into the slippery romanticism of the John Foulds Cello Sonata. A devilish vivace rather like Saint-Saëns leads to an impassioned largamente and allegro agitato. The sonata was written with Raoul Pugno and Eugene Ysaye in mind but a 'friend' premiered it and did not make the best of it. To cap it all Vierne was to discover that the 'friend' was the lover of Vierne's wife, Arlette.

The Rhapsody for solo harp is an extended concert essay which in 1915 was chosen by Fauré as the set-piece for the Conservatoire exams. It sounds both technically challenging and gorgeous; the latter being a tough trick to pull off with a solo instrument exposed to attention in this way. Great variation in dynamics is specified and delivered by Zanlonghi.

The Piano Quintet has had at least three recordings and this duplication is well merited in a work written à la mémoire de son fils Jacques. In the original issue Jacques is pictured on p. 21 of Jean-Pierre Mazeirat's notes. Fresh-faced and in uniform the picture was taken as he left for the Front. He was killed on 11 November 1917. Vierne already under threat of blindness from glaucoma, and with his marriage to Arlette in ruins now blamed himself for having consented to Jacques joining up. He wrote the Quintet as an outlet for his grief. The violin theme at 4.55 expresses most sincerely and adroitly his grieving as does the plangent tenderness of the Larghetto which is mellow as Delius and as warm as remembered sunshine. It is a most beautiful invention. Vierne wrote of the work that he would bury his son 'with a roar of thunder not with the plaintive bleating of a resigned, stupid sheep.' The finale shivers and shudders with shell-blasts and violence before picking up the overweening aggressive confidence of the first movement with which it ends after one more return to the haunted battlefields. The work closes in one breathless stabbing access of violence. There is no twilit farewell.

Le Soir and Légende are the Deux Pièces for viola and piano - polished and mellifluous in the case of the former and antique in the case of the latter. They were written for his kindly teacher Pierre Adam who died just as Vierne finished his studies.

Vierne selected Pablo Casals as the dedicatee of his Cello Sonata. This is another impassioned work which can be compared with the cello sonatas of Rachmaninov, York Bowen and John Foulds. If the Maestoso of the Piano Quintet is one of the most audacious Vierne conceptions the central largamente is the most noble and declamatory movement. The finale is sensuous and dramatic.

The Largo and Canzonetta for oboe and piano: The Largo draws inspiration from Bach - like some slightly updated Cavatina. The Canzonetta is more light-hearted.

Then comes the Soirs Étrangers - a collection of mood-pictures. The first, Grenade can be added to the list of music written by French composers to summon up images of Spain. These ‘pictures’ were written in Lausanne where Vierne stayed with the Vuillemins recovering from the devastation of the loss of Jacques. Lausanne came to mean a great deal to the composer. Sur le Leman is an impassioned and liquidly flowing impressionistic portrait with the cello acting as the orator of a long-breathed tune. Venise is suggested by a barcarole. Steppe Canadien is a decidedly pessimistic portrait. Here, awe at the great unpopulated distances, shades into fear. If these are postcards they are grown-up postcards without easy victories. To dispel the bleakness along comes Poisson Chinois which is a study in flashing speed and surging cello celerity - a sort of Flight of the Bumble Bee but with air substituted by water and fins for wings. It ends in a curiously casual but well-balanced gesture. This last movement somehow is too light for all it precedes. These reflective globe-trotting ‘esquisses’ are typical of a widely-travelled concert virtuoso who was used to touring Europe and North America.

In 1894, while in Caen on holiday, he wrote at hot tempo two movements of a String Quartet and by September had finished the other two movements. This is the work of a 24 year old. Vierne writes warm and enveloping music and his theme for the first movement is superbly rounded and most admirably handled. The spiky and songful intermezzo has traces of a fantastic Sabbath about it rather like a sort of pre-teens witches-flight - a cross between Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, Liadov's Baba Yaga, Schierbeck's Hexen and Dukas’s Sorcerer's Apprentice. The andante is in thrall to the Siegfried Idyll; Vierne revered Wagner. The finale runs skittering away like Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream scherzo. It ends in a duetting blaze leaping from the pages of Bach's Double Violin Concerto.

These are first recordings of all apart from the piano quintet (on both Pierre Verany and Hyperion) and the Cello Sonata.

A de rigueur purchase and certainly generous. Essential listening for the sonatas, quintet and the Rhapsodie; otherwise never less than pleasing. Everything is presented to Timpani's accustomed high standards.

— Rob Barnett

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Louis Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a renowned French organist and composer. Born with severe visual impairment, he overcame significant challenges to become one of the leading figures of the French organ tradition. Educated under influential musicians including César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, Vierne developed a distinctive style characterized by rich harmonies and symphonic textures. His most celebrated works include six organ symphonies, numerous fantasy pieces, and sacred choral compositions. He died dramatically while performing at Notre-Dame, fulfilling his wish to die at the organ console.

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