Juilliard Chamber Music: Franck and an Improvisation

I went on Sunday to the first of the day's series of chamber music recitals at Morse Hall.  This one featured the music of César Franck in the first half and an improvisation coached by Noam Sivan in the second.

The program opened with Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor (1879), a work with a fairly scandalous history that one does not usually associate with chamber music.  It seems that Franck, after having enjoyed for many years a proper bourgeois career as a church organist, suddenly in his mid-50's experienced a mid-life crisis and became infatuated with his pupil Augusta Holmès (who in her photographs hardly looks the part of a femme fatale).   Throwing discretion to the winds, Franck thereupon composed his quintet, one of the most explicitly passionate pieces in the repertoire.  In so doing, he not only managed to upset his wife but also his pianist, fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Whether Saint-Saëns had feelings of his own for Ms. Holmès or whether he was simply put off by the unceasing modulations of the music, he made a scene when at the end of the performance he stalked offstage without accepting the manuscript Franck had dedicated to him.  Leaving all this aside, the surging rhythms and shifting chromatic harmonies make this a truly gripping work that invariably stirs the emotions of the audience.  (They also led Liszt to remark that the piece exceeds "the legitimate bounds of chamber music.")  Personally, though, what I've always enjoyed most about the quintet is the piano's hauntingly romantic melody in the first part of the first movement.

The highly capable musicians at this performance were Amos Fayette and Ani Bukujian, violins; Jiawei Yan, viola; Hut Wongwechwiwat, cello; and Wenting Shi, piano.  Their coaches were Jerome Lowenthal and Samuel Rhodes.

The second and final work was an improvisation that I assume was on an original theme since no credit was given in the program to any composer.  One never really knows what to say about an improvisation for the simple reason that one never knows what the music is supposed to sound like in the first place.  The best I can manage is that it was an enjoyable experience and that all the musicians appeared quite capable on their respective instruments.  It goes without saying that an improvisation is a test of any musician's skill to perform in an ensemble with no score to furnish guidance.  The present piece was performed by Liam Boisset, oboe; Joe Cannella, bassoon; Anthony Bracewell, viola; and Zurab Kobakhidze, piano.