Saturday 19, July - 20h - Opéra Berlioz / Le Corum

Orchestre Philharmonique de l’Oural
Conductor Dmitri Liss

Augustin Dumay violon
Alexander Kniazev violoncelle
Nelson Goerner piano

Paul Juon
Triple concerto pour violon, violoncelle, piano et orchestre opus 45 (1912)
Création  

Piotr Ilyich Tchaïkovski
Symphonie n° 6 en si mineur opus 74 “Pathétique”

Paul Juon (1872 – 1940)
Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra, Op. 45 ‘Épisodes concertants’ (1912) First performance

By including this work in its programming, this year’s Festival does justice to a forgotten composer whose contemporaries were already saying that the music world would have to make amends for its indifference towards him, and whom Rachmaninov, his conservatory classmate, called ‘the Russian Brahms’! His grandfather, a native of the canton of Grisons in Switzerland, had emigrated to Latvia, and Paul Juon was born into a family of artists in Moscow, in 1872. He entered the Conservatory there to study violin and composition, but it was in Berlin that he chose to pursue his studies, at the Hochschule für Musik where he would later be appointed professor of composition. He thus spent a large part of his life in Germany, being elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and receiving the Beethoven Prize in 1927, but ill-health and the rise of Nazism incited him to flee to Switzerland in 1934. The Nazi regime having refused to pay him his early retirement, he joined part of his family in Vevey, where he died in 1940, forgotten by all. His natural modesty, the indifference of Swiss musicians and the war in Europe contributed to this oblivion.
An esteemed and renowned composer in Germany, Paul Juon refused to embrace the new precepts of atonality, going so far as to think that Schönberg, having ventured into a ‘coldly intellectual’ movement, would only end up in a ‘cul-de-sac’. But that is not enough to explain his being overlooked; indeed, Rachmaninov, his exact contemporary, also eluded the influence of modern German music but did not, for all that, disappear from the repertoire of the major symphony orchestras. Paul Juon’s music offers as much charm as his and also illustrates the vein of music that seeks intoxication of the senses and speaks to the imagination; however, Paul Juon always refused to solicit it with flattering or suggestive titles.
These Épisodes concertants sum up the delicate position of Juon who closed one era but opened another, belonging to one school of composition but proclaiming another, heart and soul.
Violinist Augustin Dumay’s inflections and vivacity of eloquence are sure to serve this colourful score admirably. Nelson Goerner, well acquainted with Rachmaninov, has the virtuosity and generous, luminous sonority that is particularly appropriate for the piano part, and Alexander Kniazev, with his exalted cello, will contribute the warmth of the Russian imagination.
Written in 1912, this work owes to Germany all its formal coherence in three parts, which appeal to the classical concerto. Here, the combinations are numerous, in the way interventions are divided up between the trio and orchestra; similarly, within the trio, the proportioning remains diversified with a great deal of rigour. In fact, the work charms with its highly expressive tone and richness of imagination, based entirely on melody. It is in this sense that the composer who wanted to be Swiss here admits to being Russian and, as Tchaikovsky would say, ‘to the marrow of his bones’. He has kept the large dynamic curves of the past for music that is inconceivable outside of melody, a continuous flow that definitely grips the listener. But these curves are shorter, more dynamic and can possibly be fragmented or dissected. The work also opens the era of irregular rhythms and intrusions of folk music but reworked into compositional systems; Paul Juon then appears more modern.

 

Piotr  Ilyitch Tchaïkovski
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 ‘Pathétique’

The composer himself conducted the first performance in 1893. The work was hardly appreciated and would not triumph until its next performance, three weeks later under Napravnik; however, in the meantime, Tchaikovsky had committed suicide. He wrote that this symphony had a ‘profoundly subjective’ programme—which he would not divulge.
With his art of effective gradations, Tchaikovsky stages his intimate universe in four movements, daring to end with an Adagio rather than the traditional ‘noisy allegro’. The work is based on sweeping melodies of one piece, which, as always with him, float on the surface and prohibit any development. It is punctuated by fragments of the orthodox requiem, majestic ringing sounds and an asymmetric waltz. Featuring terribly violent instrumental shocks, the symphony advances inexorably and, in the concluding Adagio lamentoso, leads to the paroxysm of a tension so sorrowful that, hearing it, Tchaikovsky’s brother suggested the title ‘Pathétique’.

Catherine Michaud