Juilliard Chamber Music: Faure, Chausson, Franck and Tchaikovsky

This article was originally published on April 8, 2013

There isn't a much better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than walking down to Juilliard to hear an hour long chamber music recital at Morse Hall.  The brief concert featured movements from Faure's Sonata in A, Op. 13, Chausson's Trio in G minor, Op. 3, Franck's Sonata in A and Tchaikovsky's Trio in A minor, Op. 50.  The last piece, showcasing the composer's vigorous Russian music, seemed slightly out of place among the French Impressionist pieces that preceded it.

To my mind, the works that stood out were the Allegro moderato and Allegro from the Franck sonata that featured Erika Matsui on violin and Jingxuan Zhang on piano.  It was the Sonata in A that is said to have originally inspired Proust in his invention of the Vinteuil Sonata in À la recherche du temps perdu.  In Marcel Proust: A Life, William C. Carter writes:

"On Saturday evening Marcel wrote Antoine about the concert he had just attended at the Salle Villiers: 'Great emotion this evening.  More dead than alive I nonetheless went to a recital hall ... to hear the Franck sonata which I love so much.' ... Years later... Proust provided a fairly detailed account of the music that inspired Vinteuil's compositions.  He mentioned, as one source of inspiration, Franck's sonata, as played by Enesco, where 'the piano and violin moan like two birds calling each other.'"