Louise Farrenc: Chamber Music (Clarinet Trio Op. 44, Flute Trio Op. 45, Piano Music)

Description

It is possible that few composers in music history are so underrated and unjustly ignored as is Louise Farrenc née Dumont (1804-1875). Ironically, and even though her worth was insufficiently acknowledged even by her contemporaries, she was held in higher esteem at her time than today, when there is (thankfully) renewed interest in the works of women composers.
She came from a very artistic family: her brother Agustin-Alexandre Dumont, their father Jacques-Edme, their grandfather Edme, Edme’s own father François and grandfather Pierre were all great artists and sculptors: together, their dynasty encompasses a couple of centuries, reaching back to the Baroque era.
Given the family’s interest in art, Louise’s remarkable musical talent was encouraged and fostered; after taking some lessons with Cécile Soria, a female pianist who had studied under Muzio Clementi’s guidance, she was prompted to move on to even more qualified teachers. The choice fell on two of the greatest pianists of the era, namely Ignaz Moscheles (a former pupil of Beethoven) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who had studied with Mozart. They were both, thence, descendants of the august so-called “First Viennese School”. While their lineage is a guarantee of artistry in our modern eyes (and doubtlessly they enjoyed great recognition in their own times), the French gusto of the era was considerably different from that of musical “Germany” (whereby all German-speaking countries are indicated).
Pianistically, nineteenth-century Paris was enthralled by flamboyant virtuosos, whose common fare were paraphrases, potpourris, and fantasies on famous operatic themes, with little or no formal thought and just a waterfall of quick notes. By way of contrast, Farrenc would be educated in the more austere “German” tradition, and her own taste was inclined toward Beethoven’s metaphysical late Sonatas rather than on cheap virtuosity. Musically, the best-known and most beloved genre was opera, while Farrenc was more at her ease in instrumental music. (Specialists debate as to why her output does not include operas: for some, this was a deliberate artistic choice, for others, she would have loved to write one but did not find a libretto due to the misogyny of the contemporaneous musical world). Generally, it was considered as more fitting for a female musician to have a career as a singer, or, if a pianist, to specialize in short works, brilliant or lyrical – and these genres were also those in which female musical creativity could find an outlet. By way of contrast, Farrenc would be one of the few women who successfully composed large-scale orchestral works, which gained recognition during her lifetime.
These introductory lines aimed at pointing out how exceptional this musician was, but the remainder of her biography should demonstrate this amply. Louise’s studies with Hummel and Moscheles gave her a fully-fledged mastery of piano technique: although her (and their) ideal was not technique per se, doubtlessly all three of them were major virtuosi. However, it soon became clear that Louise could not be “just” a pianist: she had a true talent as a composer which she should properly cultivate. The problem was that, at her time, composition was something deemed to be quite alien from a female musician’s horizon. True, there had been and there were several great female composers, but, in general, composition was a male field. It was therefore impossible, for her, to attend the composition class at the prestigious Conservatoire of Paris, since that was reserved for male students. Nevertheless, the composition professor was so impressed by her talent that he consented to teach her privately: he was Anton Reicha, another friend of Beethoven. Her musical lineage could not have been nobler.
Louise began her studies with Reicha at age 15, but just two years later she got married. This was a crucial moment for a young female musician at her time. Either the husband was a music lover or a musician himself, and therefore the bride could pursue her career (as was the case with Clara Wieck Schumann, who managed to remain a great virtuosa notwithstanding the many needs of her large family), or else she had to abandon her activity (as happened, during her husband’s life, to Amy Cheney Beach).
Louise had married Aristide Farrenc, who was another pianist and a fellow student of piano at the Conservatoire. At first, it seemed that the couple’s destiny was to give endless concert tours, as happened in the first years of their marriage. Soon, however, they realized that this kind of life was not their ideal. They settled in Paris; Louise resumed her studies, and her husband founded one of the leading music publishing companies of the era, the Éditions Farrenc. This would prove crucial for the preservation and dissemination of Louise’s output, since its publication opened her the doors to international fame.
Another break in Louise’s studies was represented by the birth of their first and only daughter, Victorine, who would follow in her parents’ footsteps and become a famous pianist, until, sadly, death took her before her thirty-third birthday, due to a rare illness. This loss marked deeply her mother’s life (Louise was in her fifties at that time), and dramatically reduced her compositional activity.
Fortunately, however, Louise managed to offer the musical world a wealth of beautiful scores, including three Symphonies (the third of which was premiered at the Conservatoire!), works for solo instruments and orchestra, pieces for solo piano and a conspicuous (for quality and quantity) repertoire of chamber music works.
Louise composed alongside her teaching activity. She was the first woman to be appointed a chair as a professor of piano at the Conservatoire, and the second female professor in the Conservatoire’s entire history. Her class, comprising ladies only, gained immediate and stable recognition, in acknowledgement of their professor’s talent in teaching and motivating them. Louise Farrenc was an acute and astute pedagogue, who devised important educational works which were soon adopted by the entire Conservatoire and by the many similar institutions which took their lead from the prestigious Parisian institution. She composed Thirty Piano Etudes, covering all major and minor keys on the model of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (but, of course, with a few repetitions): this collection became required study material for piano students at the Conservatoire. They are beautiful works whose technical complexity and challenges are, as always with Farrenc, thoroughly matched by their exquisite musicality and by the variety of their musical moods. Furthermore, Aristide and his wife did a pioneering work of research on early music, rediscovering many keyboard works from the Baroque era. Louise then prepared a ponderous publication, called Trésor des pianistes, which comprised a rich selection of such works. Although the Farrencs’ editing criteria and the instrumental destination they envisaged (i.e. the contemporaneous, “modern” piano) are questionable by today’s standards, their initiative was groundbreaking and would pave the way for what came afterwards and the early music movement. Louise also complemented this research with instructions on how to play early music.
But it was in the field of composition that she managed to conquer contemporaneous audiences, in spite of the objective difficulties of the musical scene of her era. Not only, in fact, there were prejudices against female composers; but, as briefly mentioned earlier, the very French culture was somewhat distant from the approach to music she had been handed down by her great teachers. As Fétis, a famous critic of the time, remarked, performing such large-scale orchestral works as she wrote required expensive orchestras, and therefore was a risky financial undertaking. Still, Farrenc’s works were successfully played, at times by some of the leading musicians of the era (Joseph Joachim participated in the premiere of her Nonet, and Robert Schumann favourably reviewed some of her works on his journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik). This acclaim allowed her to successfully advocate for a raise in her wages, which would otherwise have remained lower than the salary of her male colleagues at the Conservatoire.
The two Trios recorded here belong in a rich collection of chamber music works composed by Farrenc between 1839 and 1862; typically, she liked to experiment with rare or unusual combinations of instruments, and these two Trios for a wind instrument, cello, and piano are no exception (although, in order to favour their dissemination, both can be played also replacing the flute or clarinet with a violin). The Flute Trio op. 45 begins with a first movement characterized by muscular chords, followed by the statement of the first theme, entrusted to the singing tones of both flute and cello. While at first the composer seems to favour homophonic textures, later polyphony takes the lead, particularly in connection with the lyrical second theme. The same penchant for singing tunes appears clearly in the second movement, which also includes robust, vigorous march-like parts. Moscheles’ erstwhile friendship with Mendelssohn seems to have influenced the magical Scherzo, whilst the sparkling Finale is a triumph of vitality.
The clarinet Trio displays the influence of Carl Maria von Weber, who, after Mozart, was perhaps the first composer who discovered the full expressive potential of the clarinet. Here, Farrenc’s skill in developing a dense though transparent contrapuntal texture and in shedding light over each instrument’s specific quality emerges clearly.
The two piano works which complete the collection are short, concise pieces which give us a brilliant impression of Farrenc’s solo style. In the Impromptu, an almost Baroque-like polyphony is coupled with typically Romantic expressivity. In the Scherzo we find once more memories from both Weber and Mendelssohn, with hunting allusions and brilliant passageworks.
Together, these two large-scale works and two miniatures represent enticingly well the output of this genius composer, and invite the listener to further, fascinating discoveries among her abundant compositional output.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024