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Austrian conductor Gottfried Rabl talks about preparing and presenting the 2020 Romanian world premiere performance of Florent Schmitt’s blockbuster choral composition Psalm 47 (1904).

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Florent Schmitt French composer

Florent Schmitt, photographed in about 1910.

In early March 2020, I had the opportunity to attend what turned out to be the very last public performances of Florent Schmitt’s orchestral before the Coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down classical concerts across the globe.

Those concerts, presented by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, were noteworthy not only because the rarity of the repertoire selected — the suite from Schmitt’s ballet Oriane et le Prince d’Amour along with the composer’s own violin arrangement of Légende — but also in the quality of the performances.

[You can read interviews with the Buffalo musicians regarding these two works here and here.]

As it turns out, there was another concert featuring the music of Florent Schmitt that also slipped in just under the wire. On February 7, 2020, the Austrian conductor Gottfried Rabl directed the premiere performance in Romania of Florent Schmitt’s stunning 1904 choral work Psaume XLVII, Op. 38, leading the Transylvanian State Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir of Cluj-Napoca, along with soprano Aida Pavăl-Olaru as the featured soloist.

Transylvanian State Symphony Gottfried Rabl Florent Schmitt

The February 2020 presentation of Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII in Cluj was reportedly the first-ever performance of this piece in Romania.

This wasn’t the first Romanian premiere of a composition by Florent Schmitt that Maestro Rabl had presented; in 2016, he led the Moldovan Philharmonic Orchestra of Iași in the Romanian premiere of Schmitt’s ballet La Tragédie de Salomé, following that up by presenting that same composition with the Cluj-Napoca players in 2018.

Filarmonica Moldova Iasi concert poster Florent Schmitt

The concert poster for 2016 premiere performance of Florent Schmitt’s La Tragédie de Salomé, performed by the Filarmonica Moldova Iasi under the direction of Gottfried Rabl.

Chorklang im 20.Jahrhundert Gottfried Rabl

Gottfried Rabl’s 1991 recording of Florent Schmitt’s A contre-voix (ORF Chorus).

Indeed, Maestro Rabl has been an advocate for the composer’s music over his 30+ year career as a choral and orchestral director. This includes making a recording of Schmitt’s 1944 a capella work A contre-voix, done in 1991 with the Austrian Radio Chorus.

A native of Vienna where he also received his musical training, Rabl has had a long career leading orchestras on four continents, along with making numerous recordings with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. He is particularly active in Central Europe, Asia and the Balkans, where in addition to being a regular conductor of the Transylvanian State Philharmonic, he guest-conducts many other orchestras.

Not long after Maestro Rabl’s performance of Psaume XLVII, I had the opportunity to ask the conductor about his experience in preparing the music for the concert. Highlights of our discussion are presented below:

PLN: You were very fortunate to be able to present Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII when you did, seeing as how it predated the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe by a matter of just a few weeks.

WGR: Indeed, I was really lucky to get the Psalm done just before the outbreak. Here we are just a few weeks later, and we are at a complete standstill in the cultural life of Europe.

PLN: What was it like to rehearse with the musicians before the concert?

Cornel Groza choral director

“Charismatic, uncompromising, perfectionist, expressive and analytical in his work”: Romanian choral conductor Cornel Groza.

WGR: The Psalm is a challenging piece for the choir, which must be a good technical quality to make a success of the piece. I like the choir of Cluj a lot, and together we’ve performed a number of rather unknown repertoire such as Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande. Its director, Cornel Groza, is a wonderful and highly professional musician; I cannot be more grateful for his perfect preparation of the choir.

Aida Paval-Olaru soprano

Aida Pavăl-Olaru

As for Aida Pavăl-Olaru, our soprano soloist, she really loved the piece and knew the whole score very well, which of course was very helpful for the preparation. Her voice had an intrinsically beautiful color, nicely blending with the sound of the solo violin that precedes her entrance in the score.  

PLN: What about the orchestra? I’ve heard from other conductors who have prepared the Psalm that the musicians can find this music quite challenging.

Transvylvanian State Phliharmonic Orchestra of ClujWGR: I guess you could say that the orchestra reacted as expected. In the first two days of rehearsals I could see plenty of tight faces and wrinkles on foreheads — as is quite normal at the initial reading of a totally unknown piece of music.

But as soon as the choir joined the rehearsals, it was a different picture. In the end, I think most everyone liked the music and thought of the Psalm as a really grand piece.

Incidentally, this was exactly the same journey we experienced with La Tragédie de Salomé two years earlier.

PLN: How would you characterize the performance?

WGR: The orchestra doesn’t record its concerts anymore due to financial considerations, so unfortunately I don’t have an audio document that I can go back and reference. But I think I conducted the piece in just over 26 minutes, which was my intention for the interpretation.

The music got the necessary drive in the lively outer parts — but more importantly, the emotions really soared in the extraordinarily beautiful central section of the Psalm with the solo soprano — which also happens to be my favorite part of the piece.

PLN: What was the audience’s reaction to the music?

WGR: Sadly, the concert hall was not full, but the audience seems to have been very impressed by what they heard. There was long applause following the performance, and the people who came backstage after the concert were quite overwhelmed with the colors and rhythmic power of the Psalm.

It’s a pity that there is a tradition of performing only one show per concert program in many European countries rather than two or three, as this would have provided an opportunity for more people to experience the piece, no doubt inspired by reading the favorable concert review in the Siebenbürgen regional newspaper.

PLN: In what ways have your impressions about the Psalm changed, if any, as a result of leading this music in performance?

Gottfried Rabl

Gottfried Rabl

WGR: Each time I look at the score, I realize more and more how incredibly well the piece is constructed — formally , harmonically and thematically. How Schmitt, with relatively little material, has managed to create such a huge, homogenous piece is amazing — and outstanding. I don’t even need to mention the orchestral colors, as Schmitt was an undisputed genius at orchestration.

Without question, it was worth every minute of preparation to present this premiere, and hopefully Florent Schmitt is no longer an “unknown” name in Romania.

PLN: Looking to the future, do you have further plans to present Psalm 47 or any other music by Florent Schmitt in concert?

Florent Schmitt: Piano Quintet score cover

An hour of intense listening: Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet.

WGR: I will definitely try to get more Florent Schmitt on future programs. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no one knows how long it will be until cultural life will be up and running again; unfortunately, I think it will take quite some time. Therefore, I set my eyes on 2021 and on some of Schmitt’s lesser-known compositions.

But beyond his orchestral pieces, I am very anxious to play his Piano Quintet — together with the quintets by Taneyev and Kapustin. In fact, that Schmitt score is on my piano at this very moment!

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We share Gottfried Rabl’s hope that he will be able to program more of Florent Schmitt’s music in the future — particularly in regions of the world where the composer is not yet very well-known. Speaking personally, I remember how surprised (and delighted) the audience was when Psaume XLVII received its Polish premiere performances in Krakow in 2016. Surely the reaction would be the same elsewhere.


Four important compositions of Florent Schmitt to be featured in the upcoming 2020-21 concert season by orchestras in Houston, Indianapolis, Laon, Lille, Lucerne, Osaka, Paris, Québec City, St. Louis, Saratoga Springs and Tokyo.

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In a classical music world turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, orchestras are bravely stepping forward in the 2020-21 concert season to commemorate French composer Florent Schmitt’s 150th birthday anniversary.

Bachtrack LogoThe international Bachtrack website is in the process of uploading its global database of classical music programs for the coming season. Although it doesn’t provide a complete or comprehensive listing of every professional group’s events, the site covers nearly all of the major orchestras, opera and ballet companies around the world, making it the global “go-to” resource for information about what’s happening on the classical music calendar.

[Having one of the most robust and easy-to-use search mechanisms of any website of its kind is an added plus for anyone looking for upcoming performances by composer, composition or performer.]

The 2019-20 concert season was a particularly bountiful one for devotees of the music of the French composer Florent Schmitt, in that ten of the composer’s orchestral pieces were on tap for performance by ensembles on five continents. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 meant that a number of the performances planned after March could not go on as scheduled.

But the distressing news of the pandemic and its impact on the performing arts hasn’t deterred orchestras from moving forward with their plans for the 2020-21 season.

That season is just now coming into focus – and we see that four important orchestral compositions of Florent Schmitt will be presented by orchestras and chamber ensembles in Duluth, Houston, Laon, Lille, Lucerne, Osaka, Paris, Québec City, St. Louis, Saratoga Springs and Tokyo, conducted by Stéphane Denève, Gustavo Dudamel, Fabien Gabel, Dirk Meyer, Tomoya Nakahara and Scott Terrell. (The Québec concert had not been officially announced as of publication time, but the details are set and the information will be added as soon as allowed.)

Florent Schmitt Portrait Pierrette Lambert 1992

Cause for celebration: Florent Schmitt’s 150th birthday anniversary year is being commemorated by orchestral performances everywhere. (Portrait: Pierrette Lambert, 1992)

Moreover, the upcoming concert season is particularly significant in that it coincides with the 150th birthday anniversary of Florent Schmitt, thus providing an opportunity for a special commemorative focus on this composer and his artistic legacy.

Perhaps it is fitting that the schedule will feature more concert performances of La Tragédie de Salomé — Schmitt’s most famous orchestral piece — than have ever happened before in any single season.  Among the presentations planned is the rarely performed 1907 original version of the ballet  — scored for an orchestra of just 20 players but twice the length of the revised version prepared by the composer three years later.

Florent Schmitt 150th Anniversary concerts Japan

A series of concerts in Japan during the 2020-21 season will commemorate the 150th birthday anniversary of Florent Schmitt.

Among the lesser known compositions being featured in the coming season is Schmitt’s exquisitely crafted Janiana Symphony for strings, dating from 1941.  This gem of a piece is a highly anticipated and very welcome addition to the concert calendar.  Plus, audiences will have the opportunity to hear a chamber orchestra version of the second movement from Schmitt’s String Quartet, composed in 1948 — one of the composer’s most complex compositions.

Listed below are details on the upcoming season’s concerts, along with web links to additional information about the performances and ticket reservations.

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June 12, 2020

Sinfonia ShizuokaSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé (Original version – 1907)

Ropartz: Petite symphonie

Sinfonietta Shizuoka; Tomoya Nakahara, conductor

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June 26, 2020

Mostly Modern Festival logoSchmitt: Légende, Op. 66 (1918)

Barber: The School for Scandal Overture, Op. 5

Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber

Paterson: I See You

American Modern Orchestra; Scott Terrell, conductor

Wilson Poffenburger, saxophone

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August 30 (Festival de la Chaise-Dieu), September 1 (Festival Ravel – St. Jean de Luz), September 3 (Lille) and September 4 (Laon), 2020

OFJ logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90

Schumann: Concerto in A Minor for Cello & Orchestra, Op. 129

Soh: Salomé

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde: Prelude & Love-Death

Orchestre Français des Jeunes; Fabien Gabel, conductor

Bruno Philippe, cello

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September 5, 2020

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra logoSchmitt: Légende, Op. 66 (1918)

Debussy: Rapsodie pour saxophone

Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu (complete ballet)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Valentine Michaud, saxophone

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October 17, 2020

Sinfonia ShizuokaSchmitt: Janiana Symphony for String Orchestra, Op. 101 (1941)

Connesson: The Ship of Ishtar

Ibert: Symphonie concertante

Roussel: Sinfonietta, Op. 52

Sinfonia Shizuoka; Tomoya Nakahara, conductor

Yumi Yoshimura, oboe

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November 4, 2020

Sinfonia ShizuokaSchmitt: String Quartet, Op. 112: Rêve (Arranged for string orchestra – 1948/2020)

Haydn: Symphony No. 49 in F Minor “La Passione”

Mozart: Divertimento in B-Flat, K. 287 “Lodron”

Sinfonietta Shizuoka; Tomoya Nakahara, conductor

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November 13-14, 2020

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Adams: Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance

Berlioz: La Mort de Cléopâtre

Bizet: Carmen: Selections

Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila: Bacchanale

Richard Strauss: Salome: Dance of the Seven Veils

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; Stéphane Denève, conductor

Gaëlle Arquez, mezzo-soprano

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December 3, 2020

OFJ logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Soh: Salomé

Strauss:  Salome: Dance of the Seven Veils

Verdi:  La Forza del Destino: Overture + Pace, pace mio Dio!

Verdi:  Macbeth: Ballabile + Vieni d’affretta Accendere

Orchestre Français des Jeunes; Fabien Gabel, conductor

Kristine Opolais, soprano

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February 5-7, 2021

Houston Symphony logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Chausson: Poème, Op. 25

Debussy: La Mer

Dutilleux: Sur le même accord

Ravel: Tzigane

Houston Symphony; Fabien Gabel, conductor

Simone Lamsma, violin

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March 12-13, 2021

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Stravinsky: Firebird Suite

Stravinsky: Funeral Song, Op. 5

Tomasi: Trumpet Concerto

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra; Fabien Gabel, conductor

Håken Hardenberger, trumpet

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May 8, 2021

DSSO logoSchmitt: La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 (1907/10)

Beethoven: The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43:  Overture

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 “Choral”

Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra; Dirk Meyer, conductor

Sarah Lawrence, Christine Christenson, Daniel Montenegro, Cory Renbarger, solo vocalists

DSSO Chorus

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More information on these upcoming concerts can be found on the Bachtrack site, or on the web pages of the various arts organizations (click or tap on the links above).

In the coming weeks, it is likely that additional concerts featuring Florent Schmitt’s music will be announced for the upcoming season. They will be added to the listing above as soon as the information is known.

Florent Schmitt takes a breather: Petites musiques for solo piano (1906).

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Florent Schmitt 1900 photo

Florent Schmitt, photographed around 1900, several years before he composed Petites musiques. (Photo: Eugène Pirou)

Within the extensive catalogue of compositions by Florent Schmitt are a great many works for piano – including solo, duet and duo-pianist pieces. Most of this output dates from the composer’s early years of creativity from about 1890 to the mid-1920s, although several additional sets of solo piano pieces would be published in the runup to the Second World War.

In many instances, Schmitt’s piano compositions make considerable technical demands on players, but this is not always the case. In fact, several of the sets seem to have been created by Schmitt for students and other pianists possessing limited technical capabilities.

Florent Schmitt Petites musiques score cover EschigSuch a work is Schmitt’s Petites musiques, Op. 32, a set of eight short pieces published in 1906 by Eschig, one of the composer’s early publishing outlets (he would later settle on Durand et Cie. as his main publisher).

Collectively lasting fewer than 13 minutes in duration, Petites musiques is made up of the following short movements:  Entrée; Bourrée; Pastorale; Fanfare; Ballade; Ronde; Bercement; Ländler.

In fact, only one of the movements – the Ballade – is more than two minutes long, while three others clock in at a minute or less apiece.

Florent Schmitt Petites musiques score pages

The “Ronde” movement from Florent Schmitt’s Petites musiques, composed in 1906.

Indeed, these are “clean and simple” pieces that are quite far removed from the more florid piano music that Schmitt was writing at approximately the same time – works like Pièces romantiques, Crépuscules, Trois valses nocturnes and the Trois rapsodies.

Regarding Schmitt’s Petites musiques, in some respects we can draw similarities between it and Small Gestures, a set of three short pieces he composed in 1940 for the American music publisher Max Fischer as part of its Masters of Our Day series of pieces designed for piano instruction.

Florent Schmitt Petites musiques score

Florent Schmitt dedicated his Petites musiques to his newborn son (1906).

Another clue as to Schmitt’s intended audience of piano players was the fact that the composer dedicated Petites musiques to his newborn son Jean, who was affectionately known as Raton. Several years thereafter Schmitt himself would teach his son how to play the piano, and along those lines it’s likely that the composer created a number of his piano scores with didactic purposes in mind.

In addition to Petites musiques, there are sets of pieces scored for piano duet in which the student “primo” part is confined to a narrow range of five notes and where the student does not need to change positions.

[In contrast, the “secondo” parts in these scores are suitably complex – particularly in a piece like Une Semaine du petit-elfe Ferme-l’oeil, which requires quite a degree of complex “hand choreography” to bring off properly, as can be seen in this video featuring duo-pianists Ivaldi & Pennetier.]

Les Apaches (1910) painting by Georges d'Espagnat

Les Apaches, pictured in Georges d’Espagnat’s painting of 1910. Florent Schmitt is at far left. The youngest Apache, standing in between Erik Satie and Albert Roussel, is Florent Schmitt’s son Jean. Papa Schmitt is standing at far left, Ricardo Viñes is at the piano, and Maurice Ravel stands at far right.

Alain Raes pianist

Alain Raës

Listening to the eight short movements that comprise Petite musiques, it’s immediately clear that each one is its own special gem. They’re utterly unpretentious, but highly effective in what they aim to communicate.

This is amply demonstrated in the only commercial recording that I know of the complete score. That performance was taped in 1985 by the French pianist Alain Raës and was brought out on the Solstice (FY) label. The original release was part of a 2-LP set that included six sets of Schmitt’s solo piano works composed over a four-decade period from the early 1900s to 1940, and it was included again in the 2007 CD reissue of most of the original release’s material.

Florent Schmitt Alain Raes FY

Only commercial recording of the complete Petites musiques to date: Alain Raës (1985).

Mr. Raes’ interpretation is a highly effective one, treating the music with the respect it deserves and without any self-indulgence.

Several numbers from the full set have been recorded by another pianist — Roland Meillier — in an album of music for children.  The Pastorale movement from that 2008 Arion recording has been uploaded to YouTube and can be heard here.

Piano pour moi Roland Meillier

The Arion recording of excerpts (Roland Meillier, 2008).

Despite its relative obscurity compared to other piano music by Schmitt, Petites musiques is sufficiently admired that it has been treated to several arrangements for other instruments. Recently an arrangement for saxophone quartet was prepared by R. Stevens, expanding the repertoire of Schmitt’s music for that instrument beyond the three “core” pieces that are well-known to saxophonists the world over (Légende, Songe de Coppélius and the Quatuor pour saxophones).Florent Schmitt Petites Musiques sax arrangement R. StevensFlorent Schmitt Petites Musiques sax arrangement pitch range

Claude Bertrand accordion

Claude Bertrand

In addition, Petites musiques has been arranged for accordion by Claude Bertrand, a Québecois musician who has performed and recorded all eight movements from the set. You can listen to the accordion arrangements in separate uploads here, courtesy of YouTube.

What makes Petites musiques inspire artists to make new arrangements featuring other instruments? I think the answer boils down to the music’s pure charms. The pieces are unpretentious – yet they radiate warmth while possessing winsome melodies and engaging rhythms. As actor, musician and author Arthur Hoérée has written of this music:

“The composer seems to be seeking relaxation after an intensive effort; the suite comes like an oasis when compared to the rigor of most of his sister works.”

Florent Schmitt Arthur Hoeree

Florent Schmitt, photographed in 1928 with Arthur Hoérée (1897-1986), the Brussels-born actor and film music composer. Hoérée collaborated with Arthur Honegger on a number of film scores created in the 1930s and ’40s.

Indeed, the simplicity of Petites musiques is the key to its charm – and it shows us that Florent Schmitt was as adept at creating delicate miniatures as he was in crafting his big, dramatic frescos.

The big numbers like the Symphonie concertante, Sonate libre and Piano Quintet may roar while Petites musiques whispers … but in its own modest way this little charmer has something significant to say, too.

Pianist Edward Rushton talks about exploring Florent Schmitt’s repertoire of vocal music and preparing it for performance and recording.

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Florent Schmitt French composer late 1890s

A very dapper Florent Schmitt, photographed in the 1890s.

Considering that 2020 marks the 150th birthday anniversary of French composer Florent Schmitt, who lived from 1870 to 1958, it isn’t surprising that the milestone would be marked by the release of several new recordings this year that are devoted to the composer’s music.

The first of these is a recording devoted to the vocal music of Schmitt. It’s an intriguing collection of items that spans a half-century of the composer’s creative output. Taken as a group, the vocal works chosen for this recording illustrate Schmitt’s fascinating evolution as an artist, with the earliest of the pieces dating from 1895 (age 25) and the latest from 1943 (age 73).

Edward Rushton pianist

Edward Rushton

The guiding light behind the project is Edward Rushton, a pianist originally from England but who has lived and worked in Switzerland for many years as a collaborative pianist working with a variety of vocalists and instrumentalists. Among the musicians with whom Rushton has performed and made recordings are the Anglo-German baritone Simon Wallfisch and the American-born European saxophonist Harry White.

The music of Florent Schmitt has been an abiding love of Edward Rushton for three decades, during which time he has been able to study the composer’s piano and vocal scores. The idea for preparing a recording devoted exclusively to the vocal music of Schmitt gelled in more recent times in parallel with the pianist concertizing in Switzerland and France with five fellow musicians:

The project consists of seven sets of pieces, programmed on the new recording in order of their creation as follows:

  • 3 Mélodies, Op. 4 (1895) [premiere recording of #1 and #3 of the set]
  • 2 Chansons, Op. 18 (1901) [premiere recording]
  • Chansons à quatre voix, Op. 39 (1905) [premiere recording of the original scoring for four solo vocalists]
  • 4 Lieds, Op. 45 (1912) [premiere recording]
  • Kérob-Shal, Op. 67 (1924) [premiere recording]
  • 4 Poèmes de Ronsard, Op. 100 (1942)
  • 3 Chants, Op. 98 (1943)
Florent Schmitt vocal recording musicians

The team of musicians participating in the new recording of vocal music by Florent Schmitt (Basel, Switzerland, January 2020).

The recording sessions occurred towards the end of January 2020, and the recording is now in the midst of being prepared for a September release on the Resonus Classics label. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with Edward Rushton and ask him about the new recording, the inspiration behind it, and how the project came together. Highlights of our very interesting discussion are presented below:

PLN: Your project to record selections from Florent Schmitt’s vast trove of vocal music is quite interesting – and it fills a significant gab in the discography of the composer. What was the genesis of the recording – the “back story,” if you will?

Florent Schmitt Chansons a quatre voix

A vintage copy of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Chansons à quatre voix (1903-5).

ER: The musicians who sing and play on the recording had already come together a number of times over the past few years to rehearse and perform Chansons à quatre voix — one of the featured items in the recorded program. It had long been my dream to prepare a proper recording of this piece — as opposed to settling for a lesser-quality one of a live performance — to do this work full justice and to present it to the wider world.

With that as the core item, it was then a great pleasure to explore Schmitt’s further creations for solo voice and piano, and to make a selection for a the full CD program.

PLN: Within the catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions we find a great many vocal pieces. What was the “strategy” behind putting together the program that you prepared for this release?

ER: Thanks to the Op. 39 Chansons being the centerpiece of the disc, we had four singers — one of each “type” — plus two pianists at our disposal. With those resources, we could really sink our teeth into an ambitious selection of Florent Schmitt’s songs for solo voice and piano. I wanted to select chansons across the entire range of Schmitt’s compositional output, and I was also keen to involve all four of our singers equally, in order to guarantee as much variety in the program as possible.  

As it turned out, involving all of the singers proved somewhat challenging as Schmitt, like most composers of songs, it seems, preferred writing for higher voices. Nevertheless, we were able to allocate solo songs to all four singers, and only had to transpose two of them down a tone.  

As for the pianists — Fabienne Romer and me — we divided up the duties pretty equally, to share the load. (Some of the pieces are fiendishly difficult and need hours and hours of preparation …)

PLN: What was the process by which you investigated various pieces and weighed whether to include them in the recording? How extensive was the investigation, and over what time period?

ER: This project has had a relatively long gestation period. During the period from about 2013 to 2017 I was gathering songs. Most of the scores turned out to be available online via IMSLP — what a fabulous resource that is — and I found some other items through antiquarian dealers and libraries with the help of my colleague René Perler, the bass singer on our recording.  

In the end, we decided to include only complete opuses — and as it happens, all of the music scores we recorded are available online. (Note to all musicians: Get in there and use it!) I think the end result makes for a much more satisfactory disc; I do like that feeling of complete works and not a patchwork quilt of “highlights.”

French composer Florent Schmitt circa 1920

Florent Schmitt, photographed around 1920.

As for any potential concerns that an album devoted entirely to vocal music of a single composer might come off as being a little repetitive or monochromatic, Schmitt has made life so easy for us! In terms of our recording having spice and variety, there is such a great arc from the romantic musical language of Schmitt’s early compositions through the wild songs of the 1910s and 20s — and then through to the greater clarity of the later works.

That being said, I’d love to do a follow-up project at some stage in order to include some of the works we missed this time around due to timing limitations — for example the late-career Quatre Monocantes from 1949, which look very interesting indeed!

PLN: Tell us a little about the pieces you’ve selected that are world premieres on the new recording? What you find particularly interesting about them?

Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

ER: When I first delved into this project, I was amazed that so few of the songs had ever been recorded! The three chansons that make up the Op. 4 include a setting of Paul Verlaine’s poem “Il pleure dans mon coeur[“Tears Fall in My Heart”], which seems to have been obligatory for all French — and many international — composers of that period to set to music. I find Schmitt’s musical response to this poetry particularly lovely; it’s worlds apart from the spleenishness of Debussy and Fauré’s settings (to name two of the most familiar settings.  

The first song in the group, titled simply “Lied,” is striking in the deliberate monotony of the vocal line amidst very daring chromatic twisting in the piano’s lines and harmonies. And the third song — “Fils de la vierge” [“Gossamer”] — is marvelously voluptuous.  

Florent Schmitt Deux chansons Neige coeur et lys score

The first page of the score to “Neige, cœur et lys,” the first of Schmitt’s Deux chansons, dating from 1901.

Op. 18 consists of just two songs which couldn’t deliver a starker contrast. The first, titled “Neige, cœeur et lys ” [“Snow, Heart and Lily”], remains gloomy despite the poet’s assertion towards the end that there is the hope of transcendence if the heart remains pure …  

And then the fantastically biting “Chanson bretonne” that follows parades Schmitt’s gallows humor as well as his talent for parody; the music that describes a little boy’s life in heaven amongst the blue angels is like a miniature Puccini aria.

Florent Schmitt Quatre lieds Fleurs decloses score

The first page of the score to “Fleurs décloses,” the third of Florent Schmitt’s 4 Lieds, composed in 1912.

Florent Schmitt Kerob-Shal score

A vintage copy of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Kérob-Shal, Op. 67 (1920-24).

It’s pretty much all darkness again in Opus 45 Lieds, where Schmitt pushes tonal relations to the absolute limit. Indeed, some harmonies defy categorization.  

… And in Kérob-Shal, he goes completely crazy. The music is so manic and so changeable — which is of course what gives the piece such startling appeal. (It’s my own personal favorite of all the works we present on the recording.)

PLN: Turning to the pieces that are not premiere recordings – a similar question: What have you found sufficiently interesting and engaging about them to warrant making new recordings?

ER: Of the Chansons à quatre voix, there seems to exist only a single earlier recording, but with a full choir. The acoustical and musical qualities don’t make that recording very representative. To my mind, presenting the music as originally envisioned by the composer — with four individual singers as opposed to a chorus — makes the most sense: there’s much greater punch and clarity in both the music and the words.  

Florent Schmitt French composer 1940s

Florent Schmitt, photographed around 1940.

As for the two later sets from the early 1940s — the Op. 98 Chants and the Op. 100 Ronsard Poems (despite the opus numbers, the Ronsard was composed a year before the Chants), I was actually unaware of the previous recordings until well into the rehearsal process when our tenor, Nino Aurelio Gmünder, pointed them out to us on YouTube.  

Schmitt Honegger Satie Marcoulescou

The first recording of Florent Schmitt’s Opp. 98 and 100 song cycles: Yolanda Marcoulescou and Katja Phillabaum (Orion label, 1975).

Featuring soprano Yolanda Marcoulescou and pianist Katja Phillabaum, they are fine recordings, I think — if possibly a little cautious in some of the tempos. But we needed some late works to complement the rest of the program, and the contrasting sound-worlds of these two opuses fit the bill, especially the crisp and brittle neoclassical tones of the Ronsard cycle.  

… Not to mention that the sheer hilarity of the fable that rounds out Op. 98 — “La Tortue et le lièvre” [“The Tortoise and the Hare”] — makes a great finale to our recorded program.

PLN: Can you tell us about the team of musicians assembled for the recording? What exposure, if any, had they had to the music of Florent Schmitt prior to becoming involved in this project?

ER: I think I’m correct that all of them came into contact with Florent Schmitt only through my initiative — or rather, through my bugging them to take part! But no one needed much convincing, as they could all recognize the quality, the beauty and the value of the music.  

All of the performers are mutual colleagues and, in some cases, friends. They are all first-rate musicians from Switzerland, with active solo and stage careers.

PLN: Now that you and your team have spent a good deal of time living with these compositions, what observations can you make about how Schmitt wrote for the human voice? Does the music “lay well,” or are there particular challenges that need to be met?

ER: Listening to the singers in rehearsal and on recordings, it seems that Florent Schmitt wrote extremely well for the voice. In any case, I’ve never heard any complaints from the singers on that score. The bigger challenges lie more in the music’s sometimes-complex rhythmical structures — and in getting Schmitt’s rich and sometimes unexpected harmonic language into one’s ears and voice.  

In some instances, the piano and vocal lines do not support each other harmonically or melodically, but instead complement each other to weave a dizzyingly complex tapestry. The end result is fascinating and wonderful — but it can take a lot of effort in rehearsal to get it just right.

Florent Schmitt Kerob-Shal manuscript page

Complex tapestry: The original manuscript of the first page of the score to “Vendredi XIII” from Florent Schmitt’s Kérob-Shal (1920-24), featuring the poetry of René Chalupt.

PLN: Please tell us about your pianist collaborator, Fabienne Romer, on the recording. Had the two of you worked together prior to making this new disk? How did you decide which pianist would be “assigned” to each piece on the recording?

Fabienne Romer Edward Rushton

Duo-pianists Fabienne Romer and Edward Rushton in recital (Veivy, Switzerland, 2016).

ER: I got to know Fabienne Romer through our mutual colleague, Sybille Diethelm, who is the featured soprano on our recording. Fabienne and Sybille studied together in Munich and have worked together in song partnership for many years. When I met Sybille and started working with her, it was only natural that Fabienne would soon follow.  

Fabienne and I have played several piano duet recitals together, and I’ve always relished playing the Chansons à quatre voix with her (they really are tremendous fun!). In short, I love playing with Fabienne; she has such a warm sound and a true affinity for texts. She’s the “genuine article” when it comes to sensitive and sympathetic collaborative pianism — particularly when performing with vocalists.

PLN: Have you presented any of the pieces you’re recording in public? What has been the audience response?

ER: We’ve done the Chansons à quatre voix in concert many times, and they’re always an audience favorite. Prior to and while preparing for our recording sessions, we performed the entire CD program twice — once in Zürich and once in Basel. The audiences loved the music, found it fascinating — sometimes challenging — and thought it unjustly neglected.  

Andreas Werner

Recording engineer and producer Andreas Werner.

Interestingly, there was a diversity of audience favorites. Some audience members have preferred the more lyrical and romantic pieces while finding the Op. 67 or Op. 98 songs a little harder to come to grips with. Others have reveled more in Schmitt’s extravagances and adventurousness in those works.

PLN: Please tell us a little about the recording sessions and the production team.

SRF Zurich

In-kind contribution: Swiss Radio’s recording studio was provided free of charge for the January 2020 recording sessions.

ER: We recorded the music in Zürich in January 2020, at the Swiss Radio Studio there. Our producer and sound engineer was the very fine Andreas Werner.

The recording will be released on the Resonus Classics label, a respected independent record label based in the UK. I am personally familiar with the label,having recorded two other vocal disks with them previously — both featuring the baritone Simon Wallfisch. 

The release of the new album was originally planned for early summer, although unfortunately that schedule has had to be adjusted a little due to coronavirus-related delays.  

I’d also like to mention that the recording project was made possible thanks in part to the financial support of Florent Schmitt devotees all over the world. While the bulk of our funding was raised in Europe, I’m pleased to report that measurable support came from music-lovers in North America as well.

PLN: In addition to the recording of Florent Schmitt’s vocal works, are there other projects that you and/or your team of musicians are working on currently, or planned for the future?

Edward Rushton Annina Haug

Mezzo-soprano Annina Haug and pianist Edward Rushton perform Florent Schmitt in recital (February 2020).

ER: When the recordings comes out, the plan is to present entire program in concert form, so we’ll be reunited in the autumn or winter hopefully — although this depends on the COVID-19 situation, of course. Beyond that, since we all know each other very well, we’ll certainly continue to play and sing together fairly regularly, although it’s unlikely that this same exact ensemble will reconvene for additional recordings.

Already since January, I’ve had the pleasure of performing the Op. 4 and Op. 18 songs in concert with several of our soloists.

PLN: Are there any further observations you would like to make about Florent Schmitt and his musical legacy?

ER: … Only to say that I’m incredibly happy and proud to have spearheaded this project. I’ve been a particular fan of Florent Schmitt’s music for around thirty years now. It feels really great to make a valuable contribution to Schmitt’s reputation as a composer of songs, and to give his vocal music wider exposure than it’s received up until now.

_________________

We are in complete agreement with Rushton’s sentiments, and look forward with anticipation to the new recording’s release — which as of this writing is scheduled for September 2020. Conductors should also take note, as Florent Schmitt orchestrated a number of these vocal compositions as well — namely the Opp. 18, 98, and 100 sets.

Just Announced: Prisma String Trio to make a new recording of Florent Schmitt’s extraordinary Trio a cordes (1944).

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It will be just the third time the work has been commercially recorded — and the first one in more than three decades.

Florent Schmitt French composer 1940s

French composer Florent Schmitt, photographed at his St-Cloud home in the 1940s.

Among French composer Florent Schmitt’s extensive chamber music creations are a string trio and string quartet that he composed during the waning days of World War II and immediately following. It was a time when Schmitt was focusing more on compositions written for smaller groups of instrumentalists — strings, woodwinds, brass, and a combination of the three.

Both the String Trio, Op. 105 and the String Quartet, Op. 112 are notorious for their complexity — both in terms of the musical qualities (polytonality taken to the max) as well as the technical challenges for the performers.

Pasquier Trio

The Pasquier Trio

The String Trio was composed by Schmitt in 1944 for the Pasquier String Trio, made up of renowned siblings Jean, Pierre and Étienne Pasquier.

Reportedly, the musicians devoted an entire year to preparing their interpretation of Schmitt’s Trio before premiering the work in recital in 1946 and taking it on tour — including to the United States.

Florent Schmitt String Trio Pathe

First recording: Pasquier Trio (Pathé label, 1946).

The Pasquier Trio also made the first recording of the piece — which surely must be one of the rarest Pathé 78-rpm sets in existence. Never reissued in LP or CD formats, the Pathé recording has been made available to modern-day music-lovers only recently through an upload to YouTube, courtesy of the fine Shellackophile music channel.

Albert Roussel String Trio

Members of the Albert Roussel String Trio

The commitment that the Pasquier brothers made to preparing Schmitt’s String Trio for performance set a standard that has been followed by others in the ensuing decades. The only other commercial recording to-date was made in the 1980s by the Albert Roussel String Trio — reportedly after similarly intensive preparation.

Samuel Magill cellist

Samuel Magill

Other musicians have investigated the music and have decided against performing it. The American cellist and recording artist Samuel Magill noted his experience with Schmitt’s String Trio several decades ago:

“Two friends and musical colleagues of mine spent some time trying to learn this magnificent work — but as we were busy members of the MET Orchestra, gave up on it. It is extraordinarily difficult!”

Prisma String Trio Netherlands

Prisma String Trio

Fast-forward to more recent times, when I learned of the Netherlands-based Prisma String Trio (PRISMA Strijktrio) and its involvement with the piece. To my knowledge, Prisma is the only chamber music ensemble anywhere in the world at present that keeps Schmitt’s String Trio in its active repertoire.

Michiel Weidner cellist

Michiel Weidner

In early 2018, I had the opportunity to interview Michiel Weidner, Prisma’s cellist, about the work’s many challenges. Weidner has characterized the piece as “the most challenging work ever written for string trio.”

He explains further:

“So dense, so many notes, so many double-stops. So hard to play in tune together, so tricky to balance and to make it sound natural.  But what special notes they are!”  

As with the Pasquier Trio decades before, the members of the Prisma Trio — Weidner along with violinist Janneke van Prooijen and violist Elisabeth Smalt — took extensive time to master the work’s many challenges before adding it to their repertoire. They even went so far as to present individual movements in recital as they learned them, soliciting feedback from fellow musicians and audience members along the way.

As Weidner explained to me:

“We could perform each single movement of the Trio for a small but engaged audience and receive valuable feedback each time, which was especially worthwhile for a work as challenging as this one.  

[We found that] listeners were overwhelmed — even flabbergasted — at the fullness of the sound, the passion in the music, and also the music’s warmth.  We heard no comments from anyone about being unable to ‘connect’ with the music, or finding it difficult to comprehend.  

Indeed, some highly informed and musically astute members of the audience were absolutely astonished that they had never heard this music before — and generally were quite unaware of the quality and beauty of Florent Schmitt’s music.”

Florent Schmitt String Trio score

“The most challenging work ever written for string trio”: Florent Schmitt’s Trio a cordes (1944).

At the time of the 2018 interview, the Prisma musicians expressed hope that a day would come when they could make a recording of Florent Schmitt’s String Trio.

Janneke van Prooijen

Janneke van Prooijen

And now, several years later, that dream is becoming a reality. Hearing this welcome news, I recontacted Prisma and visited with violinist Janneke van Prooijen about the latest developments. Highlights of that discussion are shown below:

PLN: Music-lovers around the world are very pleased to learn that the first recording in more than 30 years of Florent Schmitt’s String Trio is now becoming a reality. What can you tell us about the recording plans?

Westvestkerk Schiedam Netherlands

The excellent acoustical properties of the Westvest Christian Church in Schiedem, Netherlands make it a popular venue for recording instrumental and chamber music.

JvP: We too are very excited about this new project! The recording dates have been set for July 13-15, and we will record in the beautiful acoustics of the Westvestkerk in Shiedam [Netherlands].

PLN: Florent Schmitt’s String Trio is around 30 minutes in length. What other pieces are you planning to include on the recording — by Schmitt or other composers?

JvP: We haven’t finalized the other repertoire for the CD quite yet, although our plan is to include other pieces created by composers who were close associates of Florent Schmitt — Darius Milhaud, for instance. So it will be a recording devoted to several composers rather than just one.

PLN: Which label will be releasing your recording?

Tom Peeters Cobra Records Producer Recording Engineer

Tom Peeters, Cobra Records Producer and Recording Engineer

JvP: It will be released by Cobra Records, which is a really top-quality classical label based in our country. We are excited to be working with Cobra and their very fine recording engineer, Tom Peeters. The CD will have worldwide distribution.

PLN: How did the resource planning come together to allow the recording project to move forward at this time?

Sena logoJvP: Fortunately for us, a generous financial subsidy has been granted by the Sena Performers Music Production Fund towards realizing the recording. However, additional funds are needed, and so we are planning a crowdfunding initiative that will launch most likely this coming October — stay tuned!  

We are hopeful that like-minded lovers of Florent Schmitt’s music — and chamber music in general — will be inspired to contribute to this crowdfunding endeavor.

PLN: When do you anticipate the recording to be released?

Cobra Records NetherlandsJvP: Our plan is to release the new recording in conjunction with a multi-city concert tour, during which we’ll perform the music from the new recording in addition to other repertoire.  

Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has had a major impact on our touring schedule, so we are now looking at a release date sometime during the spring of 2022.  

In the meantime, we’re in the process of developing plans for our tour. We’d appreciate learning of any chamber music program series, recital halls or other venues that might be interested in hosting us.

PLN: Do you have any additional thoughts or insights to share about Florent Schmitt’s String Trio?

Elisabeth Smalt violist

Elisabeth Smalt

JvP: Right now, we’re involved in rehearsing for the recording. Even though we’ve studied and played this music for a number of years, it still requires intensive preparation!  

During our last rehearsal, Elisabeth [Prisma String Trio’s violist] sighed: “An extra finger would be useful …”

It is an understatement!

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We plan to follow Prisma’s activities closely as they gear up to make their new recording of Schmitt’s String Trio — including reporting on the fundraising initiative once it launches. Judging from the deep commitment that these musical artists have made to this very special piece of music, there’s little doubt that the new recording will be a superb one.

Florent Schmitt looks to the France of antiquity: Quatre poèmes de Ronsard (1941).

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La Revue musical Tombeau de Ronsard May 1924

The May 1924 edition of La Revue musicale, dedicated to the French poet Pierre de Ronsard.

In May 1924, a new edition of the French magazine La Revue musicale hit the newsstands — one that was devoted to the artistic legacy of Pierre de Ronsard, among the most celebrated poets in all of French literary history.

The brainchild of Henry Prunières, founder and editorial guiding light of the magazine, the May 1924 edition’s featured topic was “Ronsard et la musique,” including a special supplement titled “Le Tombeau de Ronsard,” which followed the same pattern as an earlier edition of the magazine published in 1920 in tribute to Debussy, also including a special “Tombeau de Debussy” supplement.

Henry Prunieres 1935 photo

Henry Prunières, photographed in 1935 at his editor’s desk at La Revue musicale. Prunières (1886-1942) founded the magazine in 1920, which was published until the onset of World War II. A media property with high journalistic standards and meticulous production values — including commissioning more than 160 works of music from leading composers of the day — Revue musicale magazine copies continue to be valuable sources of reference for music scholars today.

The May 1924 Ronsard tribute magazine issue included contributions by famed music journalists of the day including Marc Pincherle, André Cœuroy (Jean Belime), and Prunières himself.  And like the 1920 edition which had featured new compositions written in Debussy’s memory by ten composers — Florent Schmitt included — the 1924 “Tombeau de Ronsard” supplement contained seven new compositions set to Ronsard’s poetry.

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)

This commemoration of Pierre de Ronsard, who lived during 15th century, was fitting.  Born into nobility and well-connected socially, Ronsard studied first for a diplomatic career, but those plans were thwarted by the onset of deafness.  Ronsard retreated into the world of creative writing, and with the publication of several volumes of poetry and other writings, soon became one of the most famous and popular literary talents of the day in France.

Ronsard complete works Prosper Blanchemain 1857

Do you have a week — or a month? The complete works of Pierre de Ronsard: Eight volumes plus a lexicon, compiled by Prosper Blanchemain for the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne (1857).

A prodigious talent, Ronsard created a voluminous body of work; a complete edition of his writings published in the mid-1800s runs to eight volumes of material.  Famous and celebrated in his time, Ronsard’s artistic legacy fell into relative obscurity in the decades following his death.  Tellingly, after 1630 Ronsard’s work would not be reprinted again for more than two centuries.

But beginning in the 19th century, the poetry of Ronsard was rediscovered, with his artistic legacy increasingly acknowledged as embracing several important qualities of French 16th century poetry — namely, the magnificence of “language for language’s sake” plus the imagery and graceful variety of its meter.

As for the 1924 Revue musicale commemoration, the seven composers who contributed new compositions set to Ronsard’s poetry represented some of the most important talents active on the Parisian musical scene.  The sonnets and other poems set to music included:

  • Louis Aubert: La Fontaine d’Hélène
  • André Caplet: Doux fut le trait
  • Maurice Delage: Ronsard à sa muse, plus dur que fer
  • Paul Dukas: Ha! Bel-Acueil
  • Arthur Honegger: Plus tu connais que je brûle
  • Maurice Ravel: Ronsard à son âme, amelette Ronsardette
  • Alexis Roland-Manuel: Dedans les près
  • Albert Roussel: Rossignol, mon Mignon

Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture 1860-1960Musicologist Helen Julia Minors, writing in the book Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960 (ed. Deborah Mawer, 2017), makes the following statement about the pieces created by these seven composers:

“They do not reconstruct 16th century music; rather the composers, in various ways, select particular features that act as an active symbol to enliven Ronsard’s text.”

La Revue Musicale Debussy Commemorative Issue

The December 1920 edition of La Revue musicale was dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy; the entire 150+ page monthly issue was devoted to the composer, with scholarly articles, reminiscences by other artists, as well as 10 new pieces of music composed in his memory. (Illustration by Raoul Dufy)

Interestingly, unlike in the 1920 “Tombeau de Debussy” edition of La Revue musicale, Florent Schmitt was not among the composer-contributors to the “Tombeau de Ronsard.”  Considering that Schmitt was in the very top echelon of Parisian composers at that time, one might speculate as to why he was not represented.  (Moreover, Schmitt was a composer who wrote extensively for the human voice throughout his decades-long creative career.)

I think the answer to this question may be that up to this point — and indeed continuing for several decades beyond — Schmitt’s interests lay with setting modern-day poetry to music.  In addition to the symbolists of the late 19th century — some of whom were still alive in when Schmitt was setting their poetry to music — Schmitt was a voracious reader of contemporary poetry and other literary writings, eager to investigate every new publication of material in books or in magazine collections.

Florent Schmitt was personally acquainted with many writers as well — including famous names such as Léon-Paul Fargue, Paul Fort, René Chalupt, Jean Richepin, Georges Jean-Aubry and René Kerdyk — and he loved setting their texts to music.

Artiguemy Hautes Pyrenees France

Artiguemy, Hautes-Pyrénées, France

In short, in the early 1920s Schmitt’s literary inspiration did not align particularly strongly with the creations of a poet who had been active some 300 years earlier.  But this would change eventually, and the catalyst may well have been the Second World War.  It was then that Schmitt retreated to his country home at Artiguemy, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, to wait out the war while returning occasionally to Paris, mainly for performances of his music.

Edward Rushton pianist

Edward Rushton

According to the Anglo-Swiss pianist Edward Rushton, simultaneous with his relocation to the countryside, Schmitt appears to have been drown to the France of antiquity — much as Claude Debussy had done during the First World War.  One result of his growing appreciation for “Old France” was a very special creation that Schmitt composed in 1941:  his Quatre poèmes de Ronsard, Op. 100.   In this set of mélodies, Ronsard’s poetry — itself alive with references to the culture of classical antiquity — is conjoined with the spirit of the sounds and rhythms of ancient music.  (Still, as Rushton notes, “the neoclassical Schmitt remains authentic Schmitt.”)

Ronsard original edition

An original edition book of Pierre de Ronsard’s poetry (1571).

The set of four poems can be sung equally effectively by a female (soprano) or male (tenor) voice.  For texts, Schmitt chose four Ronsard poems — two from Amours de Cassandre (1552), one from Odelette (1554), and one from the second book of Sonnets pour Hélène (ca. 1575).

I.  Si … (If …, from Amours de Cassandre XXXIX) If I embrace a thousand carnations or a thousand lilies, twining my arms all about them …

As the vocalist posits a litany of self-examining queries, the plaintive music mirrors these musings, ending with a love that “flies from me in the midst of my good fortune … like a cloud evaporating in the wind.”

II. Privilèges (Privileges, from Odelette XV) The grain belongs to Ceres, the forests to the satyrs …

As the vocalist describes the possessions of the Gods, the music is declamatory and dramatic — but contrasted at the end as the vocalist reveals that “cares and tears are sacred to Cythera.”

III.  Ses deux yeux … (Her Two Eyes …, from Amours de Cassandre XXV)   Her two brown eyes, twin flames of my life, reflecting their glow upon mine …

Mysterious — even mystical — atmospherics evoke the spare poetry, as the vocalist intones, “My hand can write no other name, and my paper is adorned with nothing but the beauty which I feel in my heart.”

IV.  Le soir qu’Amour … (That Evening When Cupid …, from Sonnets pour Helene, deuxième livre, XLIX) That evening when Cupid bade you take the floor to dance the artful steps of love …

The music captures the spirit of a ballroom — showy and stately along with something else more transcendent:  “You did not dance; your foot floated above the ground and your body itself — for that night — became divine.”

Collectively lasting approximately 11 minutes in performance, the four Ronsard Poems are perfect little gems.  They are apt exemplars of the French Art Song medium as well, which makes it a pity that they are so little known. The music did appear occasionally on French radio broadcasts in the first decades following its creation — most notably as part of an hour-long program celebrating of Florent Schmitt’s artistry that was produced and broadcast on the occasion of the composer’s 85th birthday in 1955.  That live studio performance, likely made in Schmitt’s presence, featured the soprano Yvonne Gessler.

A digital download of this highly interesting program featuring several prominent performers of the day (including France’s leading classical saxophonist Marcel Mule plus the duo-pianist team of Jacqueline Robin Bonneau and Geneviève Joy) was available for a time from INA (the French National Radio/Television archives), but the program appears to be no longer available.

Schmitt Honegger Satie Marcoulescou

The first recording of Florent Schmitt’s Quatre poèmes de Ronsard: Yolanda Marcoulescou and Katja Phillabaum (Orion label, 1975).

As for commercial recordings of the Ronsard Poems, for decades there was just one — a 1975 production featuring the Romanian-American soprano Yolanda Marcoulescou (1923-1992) with pianist Katja Phillabaum.  While sensitively presented, the recording captured Mlle. Marcoulescou’s performance rather late in her career, and hence the voice sounds a little plummy.  Still, it’s an estimable interpretation, and the piano collaboration is first-rate as well.

The Art of Yolanda Marcoulescou Vol. 1 Gasparo 1997

The short-lived Marcoulescou CD reissue (Gasparo label, 1997).

Originally released on the American-based Orion label, in the CD era the recording was reissued on the Gasparo label as part of a multi-disc set featuring the artistry of Yolanda Marcoulescou (1997).  Unfortunately, that reissue was short-lived, so finding a copy of it today is well-nigh impossible.  However, the Marcoulescou/Phillabaum reading has been uploaded to YouTube and can be heard here.

Nino Aurelio Gmunder Swiss Tenor

Nino Aurelio Gmünder

Just recently, after 45 years the music has finally received its second commercial recording.  Made in Zürich, Switzerland in January 2020, the new recording features a tenor vocalist:  Nino Aurelio Gmünder, with Edward Rushton at the piano.  It is scheduled for release later this month (on the UK-based Resonus Classics label).  I have listened to an advance copy of the Ronsard Poems performance and can report that it is a very fine one — indeed, superior in many respects to the Marcoulescou interpretation.

Florent Schmitt Melodies Rushton Romer Diethelm Haug Gmunder Perler Resonus

The newest recording (Resonus Classics label, 2020).

The new recording is already available for pre-sale on the Resonus website, and it will soon be offered on all of the major classical music online retail outlets as well, beginning the last week of July 2020 in Europe, and in early August in the United States and elsewhere.

The Resonus release happens to be the first recording ever made that is devoted exclusively to the vocal music of Florent Schmitt.  As such, it includes a range of vocal works composed during every phase of the composer’s extraordinarily long career.  More details about the recording and its contents can be found in this recently published article based on an interview with Edward Rushton.

Eugène Bigot French conductor

Eugène Bigot (1888-1965)

Although Schmitt’s score was completed in March 1941 in a voice/piano rendition, it appears that the premiere public performance of the Quatre Poèmes de Ronsard was given by the Concerts Lamoureux Orchestra under the direction of Eugène Bigot (on March 15, 1942), featuring soprano soloist Marguerite Myrtal.  It turns out, as with so many of Florent Schmitt vocal works, the composer had orchestrated the set in addition to creating it for voice and piano.

In keeping with the tone and atmospherics of the poetry, Schmitt’s orchestration here is relatively spare compared to many of his other compositions — consisting of just the following instruments:

  • Flute
  • Piccolo
  • Oboe
  • English horn
  • 2 Clarinets
  • 2 Bassoons
  • Bass clarinet
  • 2 Horns
  • Trumpet
  • Timpani
  • Strings

To my knowledge, very few if any performances of the orchestrated version of the music have happened since the work’s 1942 premiere — and certainly none in recent decades.  Considering the score’s very worthy charms, this is a wholly unacceptable situation that should be rectified immediately!

Here’s hoping that one of today’s leaders of smaller ensembles will consider programming this highly engaging music.  Frank Braley, Nicolas Ellis, David Grandis, Jaime Martin, Julien Masmondet, Elias Miller, Daniel Myssyk, Tomoya Nakahara, Eckart Preu, Jean-Luc Tingaud — who’s game?  And there are many fine vocalists — sopranos and tenors alike — who would do the music complete justice as well.

Deux pièces (1911), Florent Schmitt’s strikingly original chromatic harp composition, gets a new lease on life.

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Florent Schmitt Deux pieces pour harpe chromatique

Florent Schmitt’s Deux pièces pour harpe chromatique was one of numerous works commissioned from Parisian composers by Pleyel Wolff et Cie. to popularize its new instrument.

Florent Schmitt’s three instruments were the piano, organ and flute. But during his lengthy career as a composer he would write music featuring nearly every instrument of the orchestra — including several pieces for the harp.

More specifically, Schmitt wrote for the chromatic harp. In this regard, the composer was following the same path as several other prominent French composers of the early 20th century including Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and André Caplet.

Chromatic harp from Pleyel (cross-strung harp)

A chromatic harp (cross-strung harp), manufactured by the Pleyel company in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Developed in the late 19th century to accommodate increasing chromaticism in music, the chromatic harp (also known as a cross-strung harp), differed from the traditional pedal harp in that it removed impediments imposed by the double-action pedal system then in use.

The chromatic harp featured two sets of strings — one tuned to C major and the other tuned to F-sharp pentatonic — making it possible for performers to play any note from either side of the instrument. The two sets crossed near the midpoint of the strings, thereby enabling the player’s hands to reach both sets of strings at the point of greatest resonance. The result was smoother playing without the awkwardness or distractions of constant pedaling action.

Pleyel Wolff et Cie logoThe chromatic harp was introduced by the Parisian firm of Pleyel Wolff et Cie. — the same company that resurrected the harpsichord in an über-robust version championed by Wanda Landowska — a model that paid very little heed to historical precedents.

Alphonse Hasselmans harpist

Alphonse Hasselmans (1845-1912)

The Pleyel chromatic harp gained early acceptance in France and Belgium, where it was taught at the leading music conservatories of both countries. Graduates of those harp programs would go on to champion the chromatic harp throughout Europe, and even in the Americas.

One of those specialists was Lucile Adèle Wurmser-Delcourt. One of the gifted pupils of Alphonse Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatoire — a renowned teacher of many prized French harpists including Marcel Grandjany, Pierre Jamet, Lili Laskine and Marcel Tournier — not only did Mme. Delcourt concertize widely, she authored a respected book on chromatic harp performance practice, as well as taught the instrument — first in France and later at the Mannes School of Music in New York City.

Lucile Adele Wurmser-Delcourt French harpist

Lucile Adèle Wurmser-Delcourt (1878-1933)

Moreover, Mme. Delcourt was the dedicatee of several important pieces written expressly for the chromatic harp. These commissions came through the Pleyel company, which enlisted the efforts of a wide range of composers to write music for the instrument. The list of luminaries who answered the call included the aforementioned Debussy, Ravel, Caplet and Schmitt, along with other significant composers such as Alfredo Casella, Georges Enescu, Reynaldo Hahn, Joseph Jongen, Paul Le Flem and Jean Roger-Ducasse.

Method de Harpe Chromatique Lucile Wurmser-Delcout

Lucile Wurmser-Delcourt’s “how-to” book on playing the chromatic harp, brought out by the Alphonse Leduc publishing firm in 1906.

The two works created by Florent Schmitt were the Andante et Scherzo, Op. 35 for chromatic harp and string quartet (composed in 1903-6) and the Deux pièces, Op. 57 for solo chromatic harp (composed in 1911 and published by Durand in 1913).

Deux pièces, which was dedicated to Mme. Delcourt, consists of two numbers:

I.  Lande (Heathland): A musical landscape that likely portrays the section of Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Gascony) located along the Atlantic coastline in southwestern France. It was a region no doubt known to Schmitt, who owned a country retreat not far away in the Haute-Pyrénées.

II.  Tournoiement (Twirling): “Motion in music,” featuring repetitive pirouetting rotations.

Taken together, the Deux pièces lasts approximately 12 to 14 minutes in performance, which is rather lengthy compared to many other solo harp compositions.

Carlos Salzedo French harpist 1928

Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961), photographed in his music studio (inscribed by the artist – 1928).

In penning this work in addition to the Andante et Scherzo, Schmitt demonstrated an effable affinity with the sonority and colors of the harp, while in the process conjuring up magical atmospherics. In this regard, one could speculate that the composer may have been inspired by another of Adolphe Hasselman’s star pupils, the harp virtuoso Carlos Salzedo (born Charles Moïse Léon Salzedo).

Florent Schmitt

Florent Schmitt as a French soldier during World War I. He and harpist Carlos Salzedo were assigned to the same regiment at the front.

Despite there being a difference of 15 years in age, Schmitt and Salzedo were acquaintances.  Interestingly, the two musicians would later find themselves serving in the same military regiment during World War I, making them comrades-in-arms as well as comrades-in-music.

In a letter to Igor Stravinsky, Schmitt later described his wartime experience as “two less-than-amusing years of militarism,” so one can only imagine the lively discussions about music that must have happened between Salzedo and Schmitt — no doubt a refreshing respite from the toll of war at the front.

Schmitt and Salzedo would remain in contact with one another following their military service — even after the latter’s permanent move to the United States in the early 1920s. But beyond the possible influence of Salzedo, there’s no question that Schmitt’s chromatic harp pieces found a worthy interpreter in Mme. Delcourt, who would perform these and other newly-created chromatic harp pieces throughout Europe as well as on her first visit to the United States in 1920.

That tour was an opportunity to present Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra — a piece written for her some 16 years prior and which Delcourt had also presented in the work’s London premiere in 1909 at Bechstein Hall (now Wigmore Hall).

In addition to the NYPO Danses performance, among other Delcourt appearances in the United States was a chromatic harp recital she gave at the Princess Theatre in New York City. The Musical America reviewer who attended that event wasn’t wholly convinced of the chromatic harp’s special qualities, writing:

“Prettier quality has been heard in recitals by other harpists. In this respect at least, the chromatic harp does not appear to be an improvement over the more familiar pedal instrument.”

Lucile Wurmser-Delcourt Musical America 1920

The photo of Lucile Wurmser-Delcourt that appeared in an April 1920 Musical America interview article about the French harpist’s three-month U.S. tour.

But the chromatic harp was easier to play — particularly in new harp compositions. In an April 1920 interview for Musical America magazine conducted just before Delcourt’s return to Europe after her three-month American sojourn, journalist John Alan Houghton reported on several interesting outcomes of Mme. Delcourt’s visit — including the news that she would be returning to the United States the following year at the invitation of the Mannes conservatory to establish a harp performance program there.

According to Delcourt, she had come to America with just one performance engagement — the NYPO concert — on the books:

“I knew absolutely no one here except Walter Damrosch. But I have always found that if you — how do you say it? — ‘take a chance,’ things always turn out all right. And so I came — and I was right. I have had practically all the work I could do this time, and I have a number of appearances booked for next season. Besides that, I am to teach at the Mannes School.”

About the chromatic harp, Delcourt explained:

“Yes, my harp differs from the ones you are used to. It is not a question of the sound; that is just the same as a pedal harp. But the technique is entirely different, and music must be especially written for it. Debussy, Ravel and Florent Schmitt have composed things for me. As far as ‘looks’ are concerned, it is certainly more agreeable to watch a person play who does not have to be shifting their feet every instant. The harp is a quiet instrument and one should be respectful while playing it — not always wriggling around. 

Debussy Danses sacree et profane score

Another Wurmser-Delcourt musical calling card: Claude Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane, dating from 1904.

One of the big harp makers in this country is investigating the instrument and it seems certain that, before long, chromatic harps will be made in America.”

In this prediction Delcourt turned out to be mistaken. Despite its star-studded introduction and the attention lavished upon it by important composers, the chromatic harp would prove to be something of a flash in the pan. Within a few years, significant improvements in the design of pedal harps reestablished their preeminence as the “instrument of choice” for solo performers and in symphony orchestras.

But the good news is that music composed for the chromatic harp hasn’t been lost to us.  Indeed, it can be arranged for pedal harp — and this has happened with various scores. And that’s now the case with Florent Schmitt’s Deux pièces as well. The American harp player and instructor Saul Davis Zlatkovski is currently working on preparing a new pedal harp arrangement and is nearing completion of the project.

Saul Davis Zlatkovski American harpist

An early publicity photo of American harp performer Saul Davis Zlatkovski.

With a career as a performer that stretches back to his teen years, Zlatkovski is also a respected private instructor in Philadelphia, where he teaches and coaches Curtis Institute students as well as players of all ages and levels of proficiency.

He is the founder and guiding light behind the HarpMusicFest gatherings in Philadelphia, in which participants learn through master classes, lectures and discussion while being exposed to little-known harp repertoire. Four such gatherings have been organized to date that have attracted students and performers from across the United States as well as other countries.

Zlatkovski is also a specialist in the life and artistry of Carlos Salzedo — who developed the harp program at Curtis as well as maintained an association with the Juilliard School of Music for a number of years. Zlatkovki’s preface in the book Pentacle, Marietta Bitter’s biography of Salzedo, contains a wealth of information about the Salzedo Method of teaching, notation and performance.

Pentacle Carlos Salzedo biography Marietta Bitter

This biography of Carlos Salzedo, published in 2012, includes a preface by Saul Davis Zlatkovski that is a rich resource on the “Salzedo Method” of harp instruction and playing.

And beyond all that, Zlatkovski is a composer and arranger who has had a keen interest in chromatic harp repertoire over many decades. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask him about his work on the Florent Schmitt arrangements. Highlights of our discussion are presented below.

PLN: What are your impressions of the two movements that make up Florent Schmitt’s Deux pièces?

SDZ: They are remarkable works — very broad in scope, yet with such specific ideas generating them. Lande, which I interpret as a place where one comes from — like a homeland — has many fifths and octaves. There’s a sense of great openness which I think is remindful of the Landes department of southwestern France and its landscape and wide horizons.

The emphasis is on expressivity, and the substantial technical demands are related to this expressiveness. There is a cadenza-like passage, but it expands on the thematics rather than simply being a display of technique.

The Tournoiement movement suggests turning — and returning. The notes turn over and over incessantly, with the focus being on intervals of thirds. While the metronome marking in the score is 125 for a quarter-note tempo, it may not be possible for most harpists to play it — even at a tempo of 96 — because the score is so demanding.

PLN: What sort of obstacles or other challenges have you encountered in preparing a new edition of this music for the pedal harp?

Saul David Zlatkovski American harpist

A 2012 photo of Saul Davis Zlatkovski, harp performer and instructor.

SDZ: It has taken much time — years, in fact — to figure out not only the pedaling and what strings to use (as many notes need to be played enharmonically), but also which fingering fits the phrasing best. There are also pitfalls of encountering certain notes in the score that may be misprints or miscalculations.

More broadly, I’ve found the pieces to be challenging because their scope is so broad. What’s terrifically challenging is the layering of ideas that Schmitt engages in — often three ideas at a time if not more. As a result, the pedaling for the harp is very complex, as are the progressions of harmony. It’s restless and ever-changing, and in this I sense the strong influence of Gabriel Fauré, who had been one of Schmitt’s composition teachers.

PLN: How you’re describing the complexity makes it understandable why Schmitt and his publisher Durand billed the score as written for harp or piano performance! Are there any additional insights you’d like to share about the music?

SDZ: What I’ve found is that in many scores like Florent Schmitt’s Deux pièces, you cannot go by the printed metronome tempi. They always seem to be marked faster than what is possible with the harp. Instead, they represent a mental ideal. As a composer it happens to me, too: In thoughts, the music flows because the physical effort is removed. But it’s a reality that players face in performance.

Mr. Zlatkovski aims to complete his pedal harp arrangement of Deux pièces, with plans to publish the score thereafter. When the new score is ready, it will be made available for purchase on the HarpColumnMusic website, where large number of harp arrangements are currently offered. For harp players, it is a music resource well-worth exploring.

Frederique Cambreling Saint-Saens, Faure, Schmitt Roussel ADDA

Only commercial recording to date (first movement only): Frédérique Cambreling (ADDA label, 1989).

As for recorded performances of Deux pièces, there has been just one ever made — and of the Lande movement only. It’s a 1989 recording by the harpist Frédérique Cambreling that was released on the ADDA label. Unfortunately, that recording, which also features harp compositions by Caplet, Roussel and Saint-Saëns in addition to transcriptions of five Debussy works originally written for piano, never had wide circulation and has been out of print for years, making it very difficult (and very costly) to obtain a copy. But with the future publication of the Zlatkovski edition, here’s hoping that new recordings of the complete work will follow soon thereafter.

Now available: A book featuring French painter Mathieu Cherkit’s artistic creations inspired by Florent Schmitt’s longtime home in St-Cloud.

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Mathieu Cherkit (Photo ©Michel Lunardelli, 2017)

In 2018, an article was published on the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog about the French painter Mathieu Cherkit.  One of the bright stars of France’s younger generation of artists, Cherkit’s work is notable not only for its neo-primitive style that also suggests Fauvist influences, but also because of the inspiration that lies behind many of his creations.

St-Cloud France

A view of the Parisian suburb of St-Cloud.

That inspiration is Florent Schmitt’s longtime home in St-Cloud.  The Parisian suburb of St-Cloud, once a leafy community containing many large, stately homes, has in recent decades been transformed into a wholly different landscape of apartment buildings and unavoidable traffic congestion.

Mathieu Cherkit Michel Lunardelli

Mathieu Cherkit, Photographed outside the side entrance to the former home of Florent Schmitt (Photo ©Michel Lunardelli, 2017)

And yet … Florent Schmitt’s former residence remains very much the same as it was during the 35+ years he and his wife lived there.  That’s because the next residents to occupy the Schmitt home were the Cherkit family — in the mid 1950s — and they have remained there ever since.

Mathieu Cherkit is the third generation of his family to reside at the property, and his own son now extends it to a fourth generation.

Mathieu Cherkit book 2019

The Mathieu Cherkit book, published in 2019 and now available worldwide.

The 2018 article, which introduced Cherkit’s artwork along with explaining its connection with Florent Schmitt’s former home, garnered notable attention when it was published.  And today there’s a new chapter of the story to report, in that an attractive coffee-table book of Cherkit’s paintings is now available.

Published in 2019, initially the book was offered by bricks-and-mortar and online booksellers in France and the UK only. But recently the book has been added to Amazon.com’s product offerings, so that now art aficionados and Schmitt devotees in North America have easy access to purchasing copies as well.

Mathieu Cherkit staircase

Mathieu Cherkit’s painting of the main staircase at the home.

Taken on their own terms Cherkit’s paintings of scenes in and around Schmitt’s home are quite fascinating.  Deceptively “ordinary” in their subject matter, one suspects that they hide their own measure of secrets as well.  As fellow French artist Marc Desgrandschamps has written:

“The young artist reproduces the reality of his familiar places — his daily wonders.  It is a world of plenteousness — plenteous objects and vegetation in interiors and gardens where nothing happens … if attention to detail is the mark of precision, then it suffuses Mathieu Cherkit’s paintings in the abundance of details disseminated within his monumental compositions. 

Florent Schmitt 1953

Florent Schmitt, seated at the doorway of the side entrance to his home. (Photo: Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet, 1953)

These details are clues to a narrative that wants reconstructing — an investigation that wants conducting.  Around nothingness something eventually springs — the traces or beginnings of a story …”

Florent Schmitt penned many of his best-known compositions in his study on the main floor of the mansion, and Cherkit’s paintings give us a glimpse of that environment.  It’s amazing how similar the rooms and walls — and even some of the same fixtures — appear now as then.

Maison Schmitt 1937 Maison Cherkit 2019

Two views: Florent Schmitt photographed in his study in 1937 … and the same room pictured in 2019. Notice some of the same furnishings. (Photos: Lipnitzki/Roger-Violet; Mathieu Cherkit)

Richly illustrated, the Cherkit book also includes several insightful essays presented in both French and English.  Copies are available at many online booksellers including Amazon, where it can be purchased through Amazon’s country sites in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.

For connoisseurs of contemporary fine art, this volume is self-recommending.  For music-lovers who appreciate the creative genius of Florent Schmitt, the book provides the next best thing to a pilgrimage to the place where the composer conceived so many of his notable musical creations.  It is well-worth exploring.

Mathiew Cherkit

The artist at work: Mathieu Cherkit on the grounds of Florent Schmitt’s longtime home in St-Cloud.


Giving vibrant voice to powerful poetry: Florent Schmitt’s Trois Chants (1943).

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French composers of the period really knew how to write vocal music.  Composers like Ravel, Debussy and Florent Schmitt were taught how to write for the human voice.

— Karina Gauvin, Canadian Soprano

How can one composer be so gifted at so much?

— JoAnn Falletta, American Orchestra Conductor

Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) (Medallion by Weysset)

When one looks at the extensive catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions, vocal music is prominent.  In fact, the large volume of the composer’s works for voice spans nearly a 75-year period.  Via his vocal pieces alone we can actually trace the evolution of Schmitt’s musical style, from its beginnings as 19th century salon-style pieces in the spirit of his first composition teacher, Jules Massenet, through the revolutionary experimentation of the 1920s, and its ultimate return to a more approachable if more spare mature style.

Florent Schmitt French composer 1940s

Florent Schmitt, photographed at about the time he composed Trois chants.

During the early 1940s, Florent Schmitt penned two important vocal sets:  Trois chants, Op. 98 and Quatre poèmes de Ronsard, Op. 100.  Whereas the Ronsard Poems found Schmitt dipping far back into French literary history, with Trois chants he followed his regular practice of setting the verse of contemporary writers to music.

Schmitt had quite the knack for selecting texts which lend themselves well to musical treatment, and the Trois chants are no exception.  The verses are quite varied — as are the poets who wrote them.

Charles Vildrac

Charles Vildrac (1882-1971)

The first setting in Trois chants is of the poem Elle était venue ... (She had come …) by Charles Vildrac, a French pacifist-socialist poet, playwright and pedagogue who is best-remembered for his theatre works dating from the 1920s.

In his poetry, Vildrac adopted characteristics of verse-librisme, which correspond to human breathing and are based more on speech rhythms than on rhyming words.  His poetry has been characterized as direct, concrete and descriptive.  In his verse, Vildrac often depicts scenes inhabited by uprooted people who are unable to follow through on their dreams and aspirations.

Elle était venue … is in that spirit, as the accumulated erotic tension is palpable in the words of the poem and in the music.  Schmitt’s piano entrance is unsettled, even as the singer’s words seem innocuous:  “She had come out on the warm steps and had sat down, her pretty head leaned a little to the side …” 

But the stranger who intrudes on the woman’s space is essentially “having his way” with her with his eyes:  “But he felt a desire to look at her mouth, and that was the start of everything.  And he felt the need to look in her eyes, and that was the cause of everything.”

Another French composer, Jacques Ibert, had set this same poetry to music in his Trois chansons de Charles Vildrac.  Composed 20 years earlier than Schmitt’s piece, that music is attractive but fails to truly capture the suffocation and sense of pending danger that is inherent in the verse.  With Schmitt, the adventure is a more treacherous one — and we feel very much a part of it.

Salim Melhame Pasha

Selim Melhame Pasha (1851-1937). The Beirut-born Maronite Catholic administrator rose to prominence in the Ottoman government, serving as Minister of Agriculture, Mines & Forests under Sultan Abdulhamid II from 1895 to 1908. Of Melhame’s six children, four married into European nobility (France, Germany, Italy) — including his youngest daughter Leïla, who wed Count Robert de Dampierre, a French diplomat.

In the second number in Trois chants, Schmitt turned to the poem La Citerne des milles colonnes (The Cistern of a Thousand Columns) by Leïla de Dampierre.  This Turkish-born author, novelist and poet was also an artist and designer.  Married to a French diplomat, Dampierre experienced a life full of travel — and some danger — living in German-occupied Oslo and in Admiral Horthy’s Budapest as well as spending some months in a German “education camp” following the Nazi occupation of Hungary.

But in this poem, Dampierre “goes home again” and conjures up the forbidding atmosphere of the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, where “sometimes a black boat brushes against the silence, and your vain beauty emerges from the night, splashing the dead water where a lantern passes by …”

Yerebatan Sarnici Cistern Istanbul Turkey

The Yerebatan Sarnici (Basilica Cistern) in Istanbul, Turkey was the inspiration for Leïla de Dampierre’s poem The Cistern of a Thousand Pillars. No doubt, Florent Schmitt himself visited this site during his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s.

Dating from the 6th century, the cathedral-sized Basilica Cistern was constructed to provide water filtration for the Great Palace of Constantinople.  At over 100,000 sq. ft. in size, it’s the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city.

No doubt, Schmitt visited the Basilica Cistern during his extensive travels in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, so it is wholly fitting that he would have been inspired to set Dampierre’s verse.  It contains some of the most memorable “water music” ever created by the composer, while the undulating boat and the vision of the sepulchral lantern’s glow are chilling in their effect.

The third piece in Trois chants is of a wholly different character — and it’s where the ironic and witty side of Schmitt’s character shines forth. Charles Sanglier was the nom de plume of journalist and writer Charles Vallet, who was best-known as a union organizer and passionate workers’ rights advocate.

Charles Vallet Charles Sanglier

Charles Vallet (aka Charles Sanglier, 1875-1963): Union activist, radical anarchist, polemicist, cartoonist and writer.

As an individual with a clearly radical/anarchist bent, in addition to creating various polemic tracts Vallet’s writings included a book containing “riffs” on Jean de la Fontaine‘s classic fables from the 17th century.  Written over a period of some years, Sanglier collected his stories and accompanying cartoon drawings into a slim volume titled Les Fables du Sanglier, first published in 1935.

Les Fables du Sanglier Charles Sanglier

Les Fables du Sanglier, first published in 1935, contains 43 lively stories loosely based on Jean de la Fontaine’s fables from the 17th century. But in Charles Vallet’s hands, each one has its own special twist. No doubt Florent Schmitt appreciated the irony and wit of these vignettes and their often-surprising endings.

In Sanglier’s fables, the narrative strays from La Fontaine’s classic story-lines, often ending up in surprising places. In one, for example, an old cat is fooling the mice by feigning blindness — until a dog shows up. Suddenly everyone becomes the hunted, scattering quickly.

In the case of La Tortue et le lièvre (The Tortoise and the Hare), the Sanglier fable Schmitt chose to set to music, an old dog overhears the wager made between the hare and tortoise and ventures to the finish line, anticipating that the hare will cross it first and become a fine dinner for the dog.

But when the dog bounds out from the bushes and cracks his teeth on the turtle’s hard shell, the hare exclaims, “The tortoise took my place. I won’t complain: Better late than dead!”. Schmitt’s exuberant musical setting tracks the story line-by-line and is full of infectious good humor.

Florent Schmitt Trois chants texts

Texts to the three poems set to music by Florent Schmitt in his Trois chants, composed in 1943.

While differing in many ways, the three songs that comprise Trois chants share similarities as well.  Schmitt selected vibrant contemporary writers — two of them decidedly out of the sociopolitical mainstream — and chose verses that lend themselves to highly descriptive musical storytelling.  And in telling those stories, the composer does not disappoint!

Considering that it’s such an interesting score, it’s a wonder that the music isn’t performed regularly.  But like so much of Schmitt’s vast vocal repertoire, the piece is a genuine rarity in the recital hall — and as for commercial recordings, there have been only two ever made.

Schmitt Honegger Satie Marcoulescou

The first recording of Florent Schmitt’s Trois chants: Yolanda Marcoulescou and Katja Phillabaum (Orion label, 1975).

The first of them was made in the mid-1970s by the Romanian-American soprano Yolanda Marcoulescou with pianist Katja Phillabaum, and was originally released on the Orion label. Marcoulescou imbues the music with all the artistic expressiveness one could hope to hear, but as the recording was made late in the singer’s career, the timbre of the voice is a little heavier than ideal. Interpretively though, Marcoulescou and Phillabaum have the full measure of the music and bring the poetry to life beautifully.

The Art of Yolanda Marcoulescou Vol. 1 Gasparo 1997

The Marcoulescou CD reissue (Gasparo label, 1997).

The Orion recording was reissued in the CD era as part of a multi-disk set of the collected recordings of Yolanda Marcoulescou.  Available for a time on the Gasparo label, the CD reissue is long out of print and commands high prices on the used record market.  But fortunately, the performance has also been uploaded to YouTube and can be accessed here. It is well-worth hearing.

Florent Schmitt Melodies Rushton Romer Diethelm Haug Gmunder Perler Resonus

The 2020 Resonus Classics recording.

It took more than 45 years for a second commercial recording of Trois chants to appear.  It’s part of a first-ever recording 100% devoted to the vocal music of Florent Schmitt.  Released in July 2020 on the Resonus Classics label, the new performance was recorded at the studios of Swiss Radio in Bern and features soprano Sybille Diethelm and pianist Fabienne Romer.

Sybille Diethelm soprano

Sybille Diethelm

This rendition differs from the Marcoulescou recording – in the first two numbers at least — in that tempos are substantially slower while the music’s edges have been smoothed out.  While not to my own personal taste, it’s certainly a valid alternative approach and provides an interesting contrast for listeners who’d wish to explore Trois chants from more than one interpretive angle.

Eliette Schenneberg French mezzo-soprano

Eliette Schenneberg (1908-1948) gave the premiere performance of Trois chansons (orchestral version) in Paris in 1943. In addition to working in close collaboration with several of France’s leading composers, Mlle. Schenneberg was also the wife of composer and music critic Gustave Samazeuilh.

If performances and recording activities involving the original voice/piano version of Trois chants have been spotty, it’s been completely nonexistent when it comes to Schmitt’s own arrangement of the piece for voice and orchestra.  That version was prepared contemporaneously with the original and had its premiere in Paris in April 1943, sung by mezzo-soprano Eliette Schenneberg with Gaston Poulet conducting the orchestral forces.

Florent Schmitt would orchestrate many of his vocal compositions, but Trois chants is particularly noteworthy due to the large number of players required — more than in any other work for solo voice that the composer orchestrated.  Thanks to the extra winds and percussion called for in the score, Schmitt weaves an additional layer of color and atmospherics into the already-rich tapestry of sound.

Florent Schmitt Trois chants instrumentation

The instrumentation for Florent Schmitt’s Trois chants is lavish, calling for larger musical forces than are typically employed in his orchestrated songs.

Commenting on Trois chants and its orchestration, the American conductor JoAnn Falletta says:

JoAnn Falletta American conductor

JoAnn Falletta

“The variety and freshness in Florent Schmitt’s work always amaze me.  In Trois chants, he seems to set aside traditional romantic topics but a strong sensuality is there — and it’s irresistible. 

As in many other Schmitt compositions there are hints of dark undercurrents, but much of the music is cheeky and modern, filled with bright and angular harmonies. And then the times when he uses the brushstrokes of impressionism — when he floats with grace — it is magical.”

It’s quite likely that the orchestrated version of Trois chants hasn’t been heard in performance in more than half a century — and likelier still that the music has never been presented outside France.  Perhaps Maestra Falletta or another of Florent Schmitt’s passionate advocates such as Lionel Bringuier, Fabien Gabel, Sascha Goetzel, Sakari Oramo or Eckart Preu will see fit to bring Trois chants to a new generation of music-lovers.

Karina Gauvin Canadian soprano

Karina Gauvin (Photo: Michael Slobodian)

Likewise, several of today’s esteemed vocalists who have sung Florent Schmitt’s music — Karina Gauvin, Susan Platts, Alexandria Shiner, Korliss Uecker and Jacquelyn Wagner among them — would make ideal interpreters as well.

 

Scottish composer Alistair Hinton talks about the influential artistry of Florent Schmitt.

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“Florent Schmitt’s artistic legacy is of such importance that his work deserves all the exposure it can get. Once it has done so, it’s no exaggeration to say that the history of French music in the 20th century will have been rewritten.”

— Alistair Hinton, composer and music scholar

Alistair Hinton Scottish composer 2015

Alistair Hinton (2014 photo)

One of Florent Schmitt’s most ardent champions today is a fellow composer, Alistair Hinton. It’s an enthusiasm that dates back decades — all the way back to Hinton’s time as a student at the Royal College of Music in London.

Born in Scotland, Hinton studied music from the age of twelve. His early efforts attracted the interest of Benjamin Britten, who encouraged Hinton to enroll at the Royal College of Music where he studied with Humphrey Searle (composition) and Stephen Savage (keyboard).

Humphrey Searle British composer

Humphrey Searle (1915-1982)

Hinton’s earliest compositions date from 1962, although he later destroyed much of his pre-1985 output. In the decades since he has brought forth a body of inspired, finely crafted creations.

In addition to his work as a composer, Hinton is recognized as a specialist in the music of the enigmatic Anglo-Indian composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, who he met during his student years in London and with whom he established a close personal and professional relationship during the last decade of older composer’s life.

Hinton’s desire to encourage performances of Sorabji’s music led to founding the Sorabji Archive.  Based in Bath, England, the Sorabji Archive is an invaluable resource for musicians and scholars.  The Archive maintains an extensive collection of information about the composer, oversees the compilation of new editions, and disseminates copies of Sorabji’s scores and writings.

John Ogdon British pianist

John Ogdon (1937-1989)

Hinton is a published author on various musical topics, and has also been executive producer of a number of recordings including, most notably, pianist John Ogdon’s milestone 4-CD recording of Sorabji’s massive Opus Clavicembalisticum.

Alistair Hinton and I have corresponded for a number of years. Invariably, I have found his observations on music to be highly insightful, based as they are on his perspectives as both a composer and a performer. Recently, I asked Hinton to share his thoughts about Florent Schmitt’s music and how he views its importance in music history.  Highlights of our discussion are presented below.

PLN:  Do you recall when you first encountered Florent Schmitt’s music?

Schmitt Dutilleux Dukas Ogdon EMI

John Ogdon’s recording of Florent Schmitt’s Mirages, coupled with the the piano sonatas of Paul Dukas and Henri Dutilleux.

AH:  The first – and life-changing – musical experience that I can recall was hearing  Chopin’s Fourth Ballade on the radio, played by John Ogdon. This was in 1962 and I was just 11 years old at the time, yet it propelled me into a life of music and composition. By coincidence, it was Ogdon playing Florent Schmitt’s Ombres that was later to be my introduction to that composer. (Ogdon also recorded Mirages, yet another notable piano work by Schmitt.) 

I was not merely impressed, but puzzled as to how I’d managed never to hear any of Schmitt’s music previously. Before long, I listened to  La Tragédie de Salomé and Psaume XLVII. Those few experiences alone confirmed for me that Schmitt was among the most important composers of his time – and not just in his native France. 

Florent Schmitt: Piano Quintet score cover

An hour of intense listening: Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet.

During the 1970s, Kaikhosru Sorabji generously gave me his score of Schmitt’s Piano Quintet, about which I’d read but had never heard. Sorabji’s enthusiasm for this work had been boundless ever since he first heard it performed in London in 1916. Having read through the score, I shared his enthusiasm wholeheartedly, although it was a good many years before I first had the thrilling experience of actually hearing it myself.

PLN:  What was your initial reaction to Schmitt’s music and its stylistic elements?

AH:  That his music had a strong French accent was a potent element, but it was clear to me from the outset that his influences were more wide-ranging than that – perhaps rather more so than some of his French contemporaries. 

I have always found Schmitt’s piano works to be most engaging and, while clearly he was a fine pianist who was well-versed in the piano music of Fauré and Debussy and well aware of the work of his younger contemporary Ravel, there are also occasional suggestions of Alexander Scriabin and even Max Reger (two younger close contemporaries), while his influence on Maurice Emmanuel, Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux was to make its presence felt, too. 

Overall in my initial reaction, Schmitt came across to me as more of a pan-European composer than just a French composer.

PLN:  In what ways do you find Florent Schmitt’s musical style similar to other composers. In what ways is it different? 

AH:  There is no shortage of similarities between Schmitt’s earlier work and that of his teacher and mentor Gabriel Fauré, although Schmitt’s acute sense of high drama and overwhelming excitement goes beyond anything to be found in Fauré’s work. 

Gabriel Faure, French composer

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), Florent Schmitt’s teacher and mentor.

Fauré’s example was nevertheless an abiding one; not for nothing did Schmitt dedicate his massive Piano Quintet to Fauré, and pay tribute to him again some four decades later in the sole string quartet that he wrote at around the age that Fauré was when he wrote his only work for that medium. 

Schmitt’s mature work differs from that of his compatriots to in its evidence of a deep absorption not only of Wagner (whose potent and inescapable impact on many French composers in the latter 19th and early 20th century seems almost to have become something of an embarrassment to some), but also of Brahms. 

Schmitt’s sense of musical form and architecture owe much to a strong Austro-German persuasion, such that one could almost perceive a parallel between his natural embracing of French impressionism along with Austro-German symphonic classicism, and Schönberg’s instinctive reconciliation of Wagner and Brahms in his own works. 

On the other hand, Schmitt’s work seems to have had little in common with certain developments in French music that occurred in the years following the end of World War I. The sheer force of his musical personality seemed to be little affected by the composers active in Paris during the 1920s.

PLN:  You are a composer in your own right.  Has Schmitt’s music been an influence on your own creativity?

Florent Schmitt

A musical quotation from the Piano Quintet by Florent Schmitt, completed in 1908.

AH:  Only perhaps to the extent of Schmitt’s bold, ambitious and powerful expressive manner and his immense structural mastery. There is no doubt that my Piano Quintet in particular owes some debt to Schmitt — although I fear that Schmitt might have said more in the 50+ minutes of his than I have done in the 80+ minutes of mine! 

As well, the protracted gestation period of Schmitt’s quintet (written over a period of seven years) came to be reflected in mine, commenced in 1980 but not completed until 2010!

PLN:  You have been an indefatigable champion of the music of Kaikhosru Sorabji for many years.  Please tell how that that interest developed, and your ongoing efforts on his behalf.

AH:  It began purely by chance. On a visit to the Central Music Library in London’s Westminster Library during my first term as an RCM student, a fellow student had asked if I would pick up some guitar scores by Fernando Sor. Having found them, I was puzzled to see a large landscape-format score declaring itself to be Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum, filed in the correct place alphabetically but the wrong one by category.

Sorabji Opus Clavicembalisticum score

A vintage copy of the score to Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum, inscribed by the composer. 

Kaikhosru Sorabji Photo Joan Muspratt

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) (Photo: Joan Muspratt)

Curiosity getting the better of me, I drew it from the shelf and then proceeded to spend some four fascinated hours going through it at a desk. I could not understand why I’d never even heard of this composer, let alone listened to any of his music. I refrained from borrowing the score as it so obviously called for a pianist of “Ogdonian” prowess, but I did try to discover as much as I could about Sorabji — only to encounter frustrating obstacles at every attempt. 

I discussed my interest with my teachers Humphrey Searle and Stephen Savage. Olivier Knussen then put me in touch with a friend who had Sorabji’s home address, although it would be more than two years before I built up the courage to write to the composer. 

Alistair Hinton English composer

A photo of Alistair Hinton, taken on the occasion of John Ogdon’s performance of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum at Queen Elizabeth Hall (1988).

I met Sorabji for the first time at his Dorset home in 1972 when he was aged 80 and I was just 22. We became firm friends from the outset. On my many subsequent visits with him, I reiterated my concern for the fate of his music which was not being performed, broadcast or recorded and whose scores were well-nigh impossible to find. 

Happily, from the mid-1970s performances began and much interest was generated by them. But I remained worried as to the fate of his scores, most of which had never been published. This gave me the idea to form an archive dedicated to collecting the scores to make master-copies, and then seek to encourage musicians and scholars to prepare performing editions of them. 

Marc-Andre Roberge Alistair Hinton 1992

Music scholars Marc-André Roberge (l.) and Alistair Hinton (r.) examine the manuscript copy of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Concerto No. 8 for Piano and Large Orchestra (1927-28) at the Sorabji Archive in Bath, England (June 1992).

The rest is history, really. Music-setting software has developed immensely since the 1990s, and some three-quarters of Sorabji’s scores have now been typeset in masterly fashion by dedicated editors. Several more such editions are in preparation today. 

Many of Sorabji’s works have now been performed in around 30 countries, and there are now more than 50 CDs of his music. This would not have been possible without the benefit of such fine editions of these scores.

Sorabji Jonathan Powell Opus Clavicembalisticum 2017

A poster announcing Jonathan Powell’s performance of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s massive piano work Opus Clavicembalisticum at St. Hilda’s College of Oxford University. It was one of several public performances of the nearly five-hour score presented by Powell in 2017.

PLN:  Do you sense any stylistic similarities between the music of Schmitt and Sorabji? 

AH:  Not particularly. Sorabji’s early years found him exploring a vast range of contemporary European and Russian music — not an easy task in the backward-looking climate of Edwardian England, with few performances and no available recordings. This pursuit marked Sorabji as something of an “outsider” at the outset – and this was before he had even begun to compose. Sorabji was a very late starter in this — his first extant works dating from his early twenties. 

Sorabji familiarized himself with the works of Schönberg, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Scriabin, Strauss, Medtner, Debussy and others. He also developed a particular passion for the music of Ravel (about whom he considered writing a book at one time), so it seems certain that he knew at least some of Schmitt’s music by then as well. 

Sorabji’s early works were mainly songs for voice and piano, most of which are settings of French symbolist poets; influences on these included Scriabin, Ravel and to a lesser extent Cyril Scott. While the young Sorabji responded positively to French influences – musical and literary – in general terms, I’m not conscious that Schmitt’s music was of special significance to him.

PLN:  Is it possible that Schmitt and Sorabji found inspiration for their creations from similar sources (musical or non-musical)?

AH:  I suppose that their shared (though very different) response to things “oriental” might seem to suggest something of the kind, but I don’t think that this is especially noticeable. In their various vocal works, from time to time both Schmitt and Sorabji were drawn to French texts, although Sorabji composed only one set of songs for voice and piano during his last 60 years.

PLN:  In your research, have you determined if Sorabji and Schmitt were acquainted with one another?  If not, do you think they were aware of each other’s musical output?

Florent Schmitt French composer 1870-1958

Florent Schmitt, photographed at about the time of the Paris premiere of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Trois poèmes (1921).

AH:  I wish that I had – and hope that one day I will! Sorabji was a reluctant performer who played in public no more than around ten times during his long life, but the invitation to give the premiere of his Trois poèmes for soprano and piano in Paris in 1921 with French soprano Marthe Martine in a concert under the auspices of the Société Musicale Independante (of which Schmitt and Fauré were among the founders) appears to have come from Florent Schmitt.  Frustratingly, no correspondence between the composers has come to light and, so it has yet to be established with certainty that Schmitt attended that performance, or if the two ever met. 

Sorabji Trois poemes manuscript

A page from the manuscript of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Trois poèmes, premiered in Paris in 1921 likely at the invitation of Florent Schmitt.

I do not know which works of Sorabji that Schmitt might have encountered.  But Sorabji, in his capacity as a music critic between the two world wars, published several reviews of performances of Schmitt’s works, always in a most favorable light.

PLN:  What are some milestones of your own career as a composer – in terms of pieces you have created, musicians who have performed them, or other highlights?

Stevenson Sorabji Hinton Amato Altarus

Pianist Donna Amato’s recording of Alistair Hinton’s Grieg Variations, released on the Altarus label (1993). The reviewer David Lewis has described the music as “a product of the polymorphously polyphonic school of über-pianism that flows in the wake of English composer Kaikhosru Sorabji.”

AH:  There are quite a number, but major milestones would have to include the performance and recording of my hour-long Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Grieg by pianist Donna Amato. 

Another one would be when I was requested to write a piece in memory of John Ogdon, whose role in my musical life I’ve already mentioned and with whom I had the privilege to work as executive producer on his historic recording of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum during the mid-1980s. This piece was not a piano work but a 45-minute organ piece titled Pansophiæ for John Ogdon, which was commissioned, premiered and recorded by Kevin Bowyer (who regarded John as his keyboard hero). 

Staying with the Sorabji angle, my Sequentia Claviensis, for piano, a 90-minute piece written in memory of Sorabji, was premièred by the fine English pianist Jonathan Powell.  Lastly, I would have to include the recording of my String Quintet (scored for string quartet, double bass and, in its finale, a soprano soloist) as another important milestone. The Quintet plays for 170 minutes and was, to my sheer astonishment, rehearsed and recorded from the ground up by six fabulous artists in the space of nine very action-packed days! 

Kevin Bowyer organist

Kevin Bowyer

I’m fortunate in that all of the pieces I’ve mentioned were given five-star treatment by the musicians involved. I would note in passing that it seems that my larger scale works have achieved more success in some ways than my shorter ones, of which I hasten to add that there are plenty! 

PLN:  What musical activities are you currently engaged in?

AH:  At the moment I am spending a fair amount of time checking through typeset editions of my works that are being made by various editors. A couple of them are very old (the pieces, not the editors!) — so revisiting them seems at times like taking a trip to another planet …

PLN:  Circling back to Florent Schmitt, how would you gauge his importance within the world of French music – or to music in general during the first half of the 20th century?

AH:  Schmitt’s significance is far greater than has been generally assumed. As a French composer, he had the misfortune to be born almost midway between Debussy and Ravel, along with Magnard, Roussel, Koechlin and others. Whether and to what extent some of his trenchant views and their fearless expression adversely affected his reputation and due recognition it is hard to say, but that seems somewhat improbable at more than six decades’ distance. 

Schmitt was longer lived and more prolific than the others, and seemed to have felt no need to reinvent himself during a compositional career spanning around seven decades because he always had something fresh to say in his own way, right to the very end. 

His younger compatriots Messiaen and Dutilleux held him in high regard and, many years earlier, no less a composer than Stravinsky expressed his opinion of La Tragédie de Salome in the most glowing terms, and testified to its influence upon him in the composition of his own seminal work Le Sacre du printemps. 

Beyond these points, I also consider Schmitt’s Piano Quintet to be among the very finest works ever composed for that combination of instruments.

Florent Schmitt Piano Quintet Score

The score to Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet (1908), inscribed by the composer to his colleague Vincent d’Indy.

PLN:  For someone becoming newly acquainted with Florent Schmitt, which of his pieces would you recommend as the most worthwhile listening?

AH:  I think that my own introduction to his works would serve as good an entry point as any.  In more broad terms, the “Top 10 plus 1” pieces I would single out are Ombres and Mirages for piano, Psaume XLVIILa Tragédie de Salomé, the Piano Quintet, Dionysiaques, the Sonate libre for violin and piano, Symphonie concertante for piano and orchestra, the String Quartet, the String Trio and lastly the Second Symphony, whose sheer unremitting vibrancy has prompted more than one commentator to remark on its stature as “a work of youth” and “a lesson of youth to his juniors throughout the world” — despite being written when the composer was aged 87. Few other composers have achieved anything of such dynamism at so advanced an age — notable exceptions being Elliott Carter, Sorabji, and Schmitt’s compatriot Paul Le Flem.

PLN:  Are there any additional thoughts you’d like to share about Florent Schmitt and his legacy?

AH:  I would add only that Florent Schmitt’s artistic legacy is of such importance that his work deserves all the exposure it can get. Once it has done so, it’s no exaggeration to say that the history of French music in the 20th century will have been rewritten.

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Many musicians are in agreement with Alistair Hinton about Florent Schmitt’s artistic legacy and the need for a reassessment — such that Schmitt will find his rightful place in the pantheon of great French composers alongside such luminaries as Couperin, Rameau, Berlioz, Fauré, Ravel and Debussy.

On the occasion of Florent Schmitt’s 150th birthday anniversary, Crescendo magazine publishes an interview article about the composer and his consequential artistic legacy.

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Florent Schmitt portrait 1992 Pierrette Lambert

A portrait of Florent Schmitt (Artist: Pierrette Lambert, 1992)

As many readers of the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog are undoubtedly aware, 2020 marks the 150th birthday anniversary year for French composer Florent Schmitt.  During the course of this year, many concerts of Schmitt’s music had been scheduled — alas, too many of them having to be canceled or postponed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Florent Schmitt Melodies Rushton Romer Diethelm Haug Gmunder Perler ResonusBut COVID-19 hasn’t prevented the 2020 release of several new recordings of Schmitt’s music, — including a number of world premieres — featuring the composer’s orchestral and vocal music.  In late July, a recording of music featuring four vocalists and two pianists was released on the Resonus label, and in November NAXOS will be releasing a recording of two ballet scores plus two world premieres.

Florent Schmitt Falletta Buffalo Philharmonic NAXOS 2020Crescendo magazine logo

In addition, Florent Schmitt has been the topic of heightened news coverage in the musical press.  Among them is a piece that has just been published by Crescendo magazine.

Pierre-Jean Tribot

Pierre-Jean Tribot

Recently, I was interviewed by Pierre-Jean Tribot, the chief editor of this e-magazine — Belgium’s leading publication devoted to classical music and musicians.  I was pleased to be asked a number of probing questions about Florent Schmitt’s artistic legacy.

The Crescendo article was published in French on September 23, 2020 — just five days before Florent Schmitt’s own birth date of September 28th.  For those who know the French language, click or tap here to access the interview article. If you would prefer to read the article in English, below is a translation of the article text:

P-JT:  What is the place of Florent Schmitt in 20th century music?  How does his music fit in between Ravel or Debussy … and then Messiaen or Dutilleux?

PLN:  Florent Schmitt’s contribution to 20th century music is very significant, but in modern times not well-recognized.  This wasn’t always the case.  In her 2013 book A Fragile Consensus: Music and Ultra-Modernism in France, Barbara Kelly notes that three book-length studies about modern French music, authored by André Coeuroy, Paul Landormy and Emile Vuillermoz and published in 1922 and 1923, identified Florent Schmitt as the one composer all three could agree upon in terms of the importance of his creative output and the significance of his influence. 

Of course, Schmitt was longer lived and more prolific than most of his contemporaries, and he seemed to have had something fresh to say in his own way right to the very end, with memorable creations such as the Symphony #2 (1957) and the Messe en quatre parties (1958). His younger compatriots Messiaen and Dutilleux held him in high regard, but it was perhaps a drawback that he lived to such an advanced age.  Some composers who have long lives outlive their fame in a way — and for no good reason other than musical tastes change and the younger generation can’t see that their music still matters. 

But I believe that a reassessment is taking place once again, and Schmitt is now being recognized as an important and influential musical voice in the first half of the 20th century. 

P-JT:  What are the noteworthy characteristics of Florent Schmitt’s music?

PLN:  Florent Schmitt lived during the time of the most radical changes in Western classical music.  His birth year of 1870 is sandwiched between that of Debussy (1862) and Ravel (1875), yet he outlived both composers by decades and wrote music right up to the time of his death in 1958.  

Schmitt did adopt some aspects of Debussy’s harmonic vocabulary such as the use of extended chords and parallel streams of chords. Even so, Schmitt’s musical forms possessed greater clarity than what is found in the “freer” structures of impressionism. It is fair to say that Schmitt challenged certain notions of the impressionist aesthetic — subtlety and inwardness — and in the process created colorfully vital music that was quite different stylistically. 

From the 1890s on, Florent Schmitt was at the center of musical life in Paris and was acquainted with every composer and performer of note.  He was an admirer of the music of Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg as well as the youthful Stravinsky, at whose 1913 Le Sacre premiere Schmitt vociferously defended the younger composer against the detractors in the audience. 

Schmitt and Ravel were particularly close friends.  As fellow members of Les Apaches, there are numerous examples of each composer influencing the other, such as when Ravel announced to his circle of friends that it was impossible to write effectively for piano anymore.  Florent Schmitt then proceeded to compose his remarkable Les Lucioles (1902, from Nuits romaines) in reaction to Ravel’s contention, which subsequently provoked Ravel into writing his innovative Jeux d‘eau.  Another occasion was when Schmitt composed his two-piano work, Rapsodie viennoise, in 1903 which the two men played together in concert.  One can see a direct connection between this piece and the sketches that Ravel wrote in 1905 for the work that would ultimately become La Valse.  

In the other direction, there is the example of Ravel’s 1905 piano duet Ma Mère l’oye which he later expanded, orchestrated and turned into a ballet.  Schmitt did exactly the same thing with his piano duet Une Semaine du petit-elfe Ferme-l’oeil (1912), which was expanded, orchestrated and presented as a ballet at the Paris Opéra in 1923. 

The American violinist and conductor John McLaughlin Williams has made this interesting observation about Ravel and Schmitt“It is absolutely essential to pair these two composers. It shows the timeless stature of both and highlights the wonderful differences in their music while illustrating common sources. Each among the greatest orchestrators, Ravel was the über-cosmopolitan, elegant and composed; Schmitt was sophisticated and elemental — overwhelming in the way of natural forces.”

P-JT:  How did Florent Schmitt’s style evolve during his life?

PLN:  Schmitt’s seven-decade creative life began during the time of César Franck and Saint-Saëns and ended during the era of Pierre Boulez and Charles Chaynes.  So it isn’t surprising to see an evolution in Schmitt’s own style as well.  Although always adhering to tonality, his music became increasingly polytonal and polyrhythmic, particularly after World War I.  Schmitt’s earliest compositions have echoes of Schumann and even Massenet (his first composition instructor at the Paris Conservatoire).  This style would soon change, but the spirit of Gabriel Fauré, his favorite teacher, would remain with Schmitt throughout his entire career. 

In his approach to composing music, Schmitt would often break the mould of uniformity — not only superimposing binary and tertiary forms but also mingling various rhythmic formulae within a given bar. In so doing, he achieved a rhythmic space that is the principal of life in his melody.  Musicians have noted the difficulty of Florent Schmitt’s scores, but the key is to isolate each bar, each line and each instrument, and the larger picture soon becomes clear.  The musical rewards are many, and in the process we discover a sound that is absolutely unique to this composer.

P-JT:  For me, Florent Schmitt is above all a composer for the orchestra, with an astounding mastery of orchestration. Was he also equally comfortable with small instrumental and pianistic forms?

PLN:  Schmitt is justly recognized for his highly effective use of instrumental color as he built his massive frescoes.  In such works as La Tragédie de Salomé (1907/10), Antoine et Cléopâtre (1920), Salammbó (1925) and Oriane et le Prince d’Amour (1934), his orchestrations are so colorful, they’re like Rimsky-Korsakov on steroids!  But we should also remember that Schmitt knew how to write very effectively for piano and for voice, as well as for smaller musical forces. 

Schmitt’s own instruments were the piano, organ and flute, and we can see from his catalogue that wrote vast swaths of music for solo and duo-pianists.  Many of these were composed during his early years, although several later sets such as Trois danses (1936) and Enfants (1941) are also noteworthy.

Later in his career Florent Schmitt produced numerous pieces for smaller ensembles, including quartets for saxophones, flutes and trombones/tuba plus a clarinet sextet.  His Trio à cordes (1946) and Quatuor à cordes (1948) are legendary for their rich sonorities — and for their complexity.  In these and other chamber works such as A Tour d’anches (1939), Hasards (1943) and Quatuor pour presque tous les temps (1956), it’s fascinating how Schmitt was able to coax such robust sounds and colors from just three or four musicians.  All  are incredible meaty compositions that offer fresh musical insights with each subsequent hearing.

P-JT:  Florent Schmitt was also interested in the saxophone.  We are indebted to him a for quartet for saxophones which is one of the pillars of the repertoire, and also the superb Légende for saxophone and orchestra.  What drew him to this instrument?  How did he take advantage of the possibilities of this instrument?

PLN:  Schmitt was one of numerous French composers who created works for the saxophone, which isn’t in itself surprising considering that the saxophone was invented and first took root in France and Belgium.  Even a composer like Léo Delibes included a saxophone part in the score for his ballet Sylvia in 1876.  But Schmitt knew how to exploit the colors of this instrument in ways that few of his contemporaries were able to match.  Most saxophonists will tell you that Schmitt’s Légende (1918) is a far more compelling piece of music than Debussy’s Rapsodie, for example. 

The Quatuor pour saxophones (1944) has earned special pride of place in the repertoire — and for good reason.  The Quatuor was one of numerous pieces that were commissioned by Marcel Mule following the creation of his saxophone class at the Paris Conservatoire. It’s acknowledged that a real demarcation was set between this work and compositions written previously for saxophone. 

Speaking of setting a demarcation, I think the same can be said of Dionysiaques, Schmitt’s incredible wind band piece written in 1913 for the Garde Republicaine.  Dionysiaques was the first truly artistic work created for large concert band; in its inventive writing, it’s quite clear that Schmitt considered the potential of wind ensembles to be “without limits.”

P-JT:  What is, for you, his greatest masterpiece?  Why?

PLN:  Florent Schmitt’s catalogue of compositions is extensive — some 138 opus numbers plus additional pieces — so it is very difficult to select just one work!  But if I were to choose just one, for me personally it would be Schmitt’s monumental setting of Psaume XLVII, which was one of the final envois to be delivered by Schmitt to the Paris Conservatoire in 1904 from his Prix de Rome sojourn.  Scored for soprano solo, mixed-part chorus, organ and large orchestra, it is an astonishing creation that took musical Paris by storm when it was premiered two days after Christmas in 1906.  At the time the composer was heralded as “The New Berlioz,” and one can well understand why.

The conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud recounts how the great Manuel Rosenthal once said to him, “If you were to conduct only one French choral work during your career, it should be this Psalm.”

P-JT:  Does the work of Florent Schmitt seem to you to be at the dawn of a revival?  It seems to me that for some years the recordings have multiplied.

PLN:  I would say that the revival is already happening.  Today, approximately two-thirds of Schmitt’s compositions have been commercially recorded, with a substantial number of recording premieres happening within the past decade.  Several pieces, such as the Antoine et Cléopâtre suites, Le Palais hanté (1904) and the Sonate libre for violin and piano (1920), have had multiple new recordings during that time.

Equally important, Schmitt’s music is appearing more frequently in the concert hall and on recital programs.  The Florent Schmitt Website lists more than 1,000 solo musicians who keep Schmitt’s music in their performing repertoire, and the number is growing.  There are more than a dozen internationally known conductors who have become particularly active in programming Schmitt’s music beyond just his most famous piece La Tragédie de Salomé — most notably JoAnn Falletta and Leon Botstein in the United States, Sakari Oramo in the United Kingdom, Jacques Mercier in France, Gottfried Rabl in Central and Eastern Europe, Ira Levin in South America, and Fabien Gabel all over the world.  And there are others …

P-JT:  My last question is more personal. What attracted you to the work of Florent Schmitt, of which you are a great connoisseur?

PLN:  My first exposure to Florent Schmitt’s music was purely by chance, when at the age of 14 I heard Paul Paray’s classic 1958 Detroit Symphony Orchestra recording of La Tragédie de Salomé.  As an impressionable teenager, I was instantly captivated by music that was so sensuous and at the same time tinged with danger.  That was the beginning of a five-decade love affair with the composer’s music that, over time and with greater exploration, has only deepened my appreciation for the incredible gifts of this composer and the magnificent artistic legacy he left us. 

It gives me tremendous satisfaction to see that Florent Schmitt’s star is rising again — his true talents now visible and evident to everyone.  Florent Schmitt is no longer merely a fine French composer; today he belongs to the entire world.

 

Florent Schmitt is featured as BBC Music Magazine‘s Composer of the Month in its September 2020 issue.

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Composer of the Month designation coincides with the commemoration of Schmitt’s 150th birthday anniversary.

Florent Schmitt Matt Herring 2020

Florent Schmitt (illustration/collage by Matt Herring for BBC Music Magazine, September 2020).

BBC Music Magazine logoBBC Music Magazine has honored French composer Florent Schmitt as its Composer of the Month for September, 2020.  The coverage ties together with activities commemorating the 150th birthday anniversary of the composer, who was born in Blamont, Lorraine on September 28, 1870.

Roger Nichols author music scholar

Roger Nichols

The coverage in BBC Music Magazine dovetails with various other commemorative activities scheduled during the 2020 anniversary year, including feature articles published in Belgium’s Crescendo and Germany’s FonoForum music magazines.  In addition, France-Musique has produced a three part broadcast series featuring a wide range of works composed by Schmitt, while new commercial recordings have been issued on the NAXOS and Resonus labels that contain several significant world premieres.

The feature article in BBC Music Magazine was penned by Roger Nichols, a British music scholar and a contributing writer for the magazine who is a highly respected specialist in French music.  Nichols has authored books and articles devoted to composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen.

The Harlequin Years Roger NicholsRoger Nichols is also the author of the 2003 book The Harlequin Years:  Music in Paris, 1917-1929 — the research sources for which undoubtedly gave him a wealth of information about Florent Schmitt to prepare his BBC Music Magazine feature article.

The degree to which Nichols is an esteemed scholar on French music is such that the French Government appointed Nichols a chevalier of the Legion d’honneur in 2007 in recognition of his accomplishments.

Florent Schmitt Musical Style Roger Nichols

Florent Schmitt’s compositional style, as summarized by music scholar Roger Nichols (BBC Music Magazine, September 2020).

Nichols’ article on Schmitt is well-worth reading.  In it, he recounts the composer’s early life and how his studies at the music conservatory in Nancy prepared him to enter the Paris Conservatoire in 1889, where his composition teachers would include Massenet and Fauré.

Nichols also provides colorful anecdotes about Schmitt’s “pronouncements” as a Parisian music critic during the early 1900s.  Few composers were spared Schmitt’s pithy and sometimes-acerbic commentary if their music didn’t measure up to his own high standards.

In addition, Nichols provides an illuminating description of Florent Schmitt’s compositional style — one that captures its essence beautifully and gets at the heart of Schmitt’s “secret sauce” better than most any other writer.

The Nichols article on Florent Schmitt is available to view in the September 2020 digital edition of BBC Music Magazine via this link.  The feature article begins on Page 56.

Just released: A new recording of four Florent Schmitt orchestral works with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

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The new NAXOS release features two iconic ballet suites along with two world premiere recordings.

Florent Schmitt JoAnn Falletta NAXOS 2020

Florent Schmitt JoAnn Falletta NAXOS

The 2015 NAXOS recording.

Back in 2015, a recording of the music of Florent Schmitt on the NAXOS label, performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director, JoAnn Falletta, was a noteworthy artistic and commercial success. 

Today, these same musical forces are back with a new Schmitt recording — this one headlined by La Tragédie de Salomé, the composer’s best-known orchestral work.

Florent Schmitt Salome Oriane Falletta NAXOS 2020

The 2020 NAXOS release.

While any new recording of Salomé is a welcome event, that work is actually quite well-represented on disk — this newest one being the piece’s 18th commercial recording to date.

What makes the new release even more special is the inclusion of the suite from the ballet Oriane et le Prince d’Amour, which stemmed from a 1933 commission from the famed dancer and dramatic actress Ida Rubinstein.  This is only the second commercial recording ever made of this stunning piece of music.

Susan Platts

Susan Platts

Moreover, the new NAXOS release includes two recording premieres.  One is the ravishing orchestral song Musique sur l’eau, dating from 1898 and set to the words of the symbolist poet Albert Samain.  Schmitt’s original version of the piece was for voice and piano, and the composer orchestrated the music in 1913.  Mezzo-soprano Susan Platts is the featured soloist (who also appears as the vocal soloist in the Salomé score).

Nikki Chooi violin

Nikki Chooi (Photo: Den Sweeney)

The other recording premiere is the dark, moody Légende.  Composed in 1918 for saxophone and piano, several years later Schmitt created two alternate versions of the piece featuring viola and violin soloists.  While the saxophone version of the Légende is well-known, here we have the first-ever recording of the violin/orchestra score, featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic’s concertmaster Nikki Chooi.

Florent Schmitt Salome Oriane Falletta Buffalo NAXOS 2020 cover

JoAnn Falletta is among a group of internationally known conductors — including Sakari Oramo, Fabien Gabel, Stéphane Denève, Lionel Bringuier, Leon Botstein and others — who are actively championing Schmitt’s music.  Explaining why she does so, Falletta observes:

“Florent Schmitt is an extremely important part of French compositional development in the 20th century.  His strong, original voice illuminates the period between impressionism and modernism in France in a way that no other composer does.”

[You can hear more of JoAnn Falletta’s observations about Florent Schmitt and his music in this recent podcast interview with the conductor that has been uploaded to the Internet.]

Florent Schmitt JoAnn Falletta Buffalo NAXOS 2020

Alistair Hinton Scottish composer 2015

Alistair Hinton

The NAXOS recording’s official release date is November 13, 2020.  But the recording has already made its way to various broadcasting outlets and is being heard on the air. BBC Radio 3 broadcast Musique sur l’eau in early November, and one person who heard the performance was Scottish composer Alistair Hinton.  His reaction:

“I’d not heard this piece in many years and it was great to reacquaint myself with it.  I could not help but think that it possesses something of a sense of Arnold Schoenberg’s Op. 8 songs — but with a very French accent (or it might have done so had this work not predated the Schoenberg by some seven years!).”

Gene Schiller Music Director Hawaii Public Radio

Gene Schiller

Gene Schiller, music director at Hawaii Public Radio, broadcast two pieces from the new recording in early November as well — the Légende and La Tragédie de Salomé.  His comment:

“Sumptuous performances — as much excitement as I’ve ever heard in the Danse de l’effroi! [the final movement of Salomé].”

And the arts critic Steven Kruger is weighing in with particular praise for the two ballet scores, writing:

“This is a winning release.  In the vanishing wake of dodecaphonic music, where process was everything, we seem to be rediscovering beauty and meaning in composers who were, so to speak, left behind.

Steven Kruger Arts Critic

Steven Kruger

It has taken a while, but Schmitt’s music has been making its slow and steady way into the repertoire.  JoAnn Falletta has been an unfailingly successful advocate on CD.  There are quite a few versions of La Tragédie de Salomé available — but none more refined and silky than this one …

Serge Lifar Oriane et le Prince d'Amour Pierre Boucher

Serge Lifar as the Prince of Love in Florent Schmitt’s ballet Oriane et le Prince d’Amour. (Artwork by Pierre Boucher, 1908-2000.)

A special treat here is Oriane et le Prince d’Amour, a similar ballet score filled with erotic intensity.  Its menacing opening for muted brass — and convulsive sensual quality throughout — should assure it a future.”

The new Schmitt recording headlines NAXOS’s November release list, and the CD/download is readily available from online music retailers throughout the world including ArkivMusic, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Presto Classical and HBDirect, among others. 

Simply put, for lovers of French music — or any late-romantic/early modern music for that matter — this is a “can’t-miss” release.

Florent Schmitt’s affectionate tribute to Frédéric Chopin: Le Chant de la nuit (1949/51).

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Frederic Chopin

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Recently, audio documentation one of Florent Schmitt’s most interesting (and elusive) choral compositions has emerged – and it’s come from an unlikely source.  It is a 1987 live performance of Schmitt’s Le Chant de la nuit, Op. 120, a work that carries the subtitle Ode à Frédéric Chopin

Chiba University Chorus Fumiaki Kuriyama

The Chiba University Singers directed by Fumiaki Kuriyama at the 40th annual All-Japan National Choral Competition, held at Hitomi Memorial Hall on the campus of Showa Women’s University in Tokyo (1987).

The performance is by the Chiba University Singers as recorded at the 1987 All-Japan Choral Competition, an annual program held under the auspices of the Japan Choral Association.  The 1987 event was the 40th anniversary for the national competition, which began in 1947.

UNESCO logoLe Chant de la nuit is one of the most intriguing of Florent Schmitt’s choral compositions.  The piece was commissioned by the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to commemorate the centenary of the death of the composer Frédéric Chopin, who was born in 1811 and died on August 17, 1847. 

In creating the new composition, Florent Schmitt chose as his text the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, translated into French by the Swiss author Guy de Pourtalès as follows:

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Il fait nuit – Voici que s’élève plus haut la voix des fontaines jaillissantes … Et mon âme, elle aussi, est une fontaine jaillissante.

Il fait nuit – Voici que s’éveillent tous les chants des amoureux … Et mon âme, elle aussi, est un chant d’amoureux.

Il y a en moi quelque chose d’inapaisé et d’inapaisable qui veut élever la voix … Il y a en moi un désir d’amour qui parle lui-même le langage de l’amour.

Je suis lumière – Ah – si j’étais nuit … Mais ceci est ma solitude d’être enveloppé de lumière.

… which translates to English roughly as follows:

Guy de Pourtales Swiss Author

Guy de Pourtalès (1881-1941)

It is night — Here is the voice of the gushing fountains rising higher … And my soul, too, gushes like a fountain.

It is night — Here are all the songs of lovers … And my soul, too, is a love song.

There is something in me that is uneasy, and that wants to raise its voice … There is in me a desire for love, which itself speaks the language of love.

I am light — Ah, if only I were night … But this is my loneliness, to be enveloped in light.

Characterized by Yves Hucher, Schmitt’s biographer, as a “moving tribute” to the older composer, Le Chant de la nuit is scored for solo voices or a mixed chorus and piano.  One of the themes used by Schmitt in the piece comes from the thirteenth Nocturne (Op. 48, No. 1) of Chopin, and the way this motif is employed is sheer genius – simple yet highly effective. Beyond this direct quote, there are numerous phrases and textures that are remindful of other Chopin pieces, such as the Raindrop Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15.

Andre Cluytens French conductor

André Cluytens (1905-1967)

The new work had its premiere at a UNESCO concert in Paris in October 1949, exactly 100 years after the death of Chopin, presented by the Chorale Marcel Couraud.  In February 1951, André Cluytens and a chorus led by Jean Gitton presented Schmitt’s orchestral version of the piece at a Paris Conservatoire Orchestra concert, where it received glowing reviews from the musical press.

But then after that … silence for several decades.  I have been unable to find evidence of the piece being presented again until the 1987 All-Japan Choral Competition done by the Chiba University Singers, performed at Hitomi Memorial Hall on the campus of Showa Women’s University in Tokyo. 

Fumiaki Kuriyama

Fumiaki Kuriyama

We can thank choral director Fumiaki Kuriyama, one of Japan’s best-known and highly regarded choral conductors, for resurrecting the piece.  Famed for championing contemporary Japanese works, Maestro Kuriyama has also been an advocate for neglected choral compositions from other countries. 

Kuriyama has led performances all over the world, including at the Oregon Bach Festival in the USA. A portion of his musical training was in Europe, where not only did he win top prizes at international choral competitions in Tolosa (Spain) and at Arezzo (Italy), Kuriyama also explored the choral output of numerous European composers – some of it quite rare.  In addition to introducing Le Chant de la nuit to Japanese audiences, Kuriyama has directed other choral works by Florent Schmitt as well.

Japan Choral Association logoListening to the well-prepared Chiba University choral ensemble, the singers do a very commendable job negotiating the sometimes-tricky challenges of Florent Schmitt’s score, and they’re joined by the able contribution of pianist Yoko Tanaka. 

The musicians’ artistic achievements are even more clearly evident when following along with the score to the piece, which we can now do thanks to George ‘Nick’ Gianopoulos and his estimable music channel on YouTubeClick here to “see as well as hear” this music in all of its endlessly fascinating splendor; I think you will be impressed.

Brain Music All-Japan Choral Competition Vol. 6 1987 Florent Schmitt

Florent Schmitt’s Le Chant de la nuit is included in Volume 6 of a series of ten CDs devoted to highlights from select All-Japan Choral Competition events. It is available on Japan’s Brain Music label.

With the welcome emergence of this 1987 live performance from Japan, the music world now has a renewed opportunity to become acquainted with this piece, with future  performances hopefully to follow. 

Moreover, it would be fortuitous if one of Florent Schmitt’s ardent champions in the conducting world would see fit to investigate the orchestral version of Le Chant de la nuit.  If so, rich musical rewards would be in store for us all!

Investigating the mystery – and promise – of Florent Schmitt’s “Poèmes des lacs” (Les Barques, Demande, Musique sur l’eau, Soir sur le lac, Tristesse au jardin — 1897-1901)

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Florent Schmitt 1900 photo

Florent Schmitt, photographed in 1900 around the time he composed the vocal works that he brought together under the broad title “Poèmes des lacs.” (Photo: Eugène Pirou)

Recently, two documents have emerged that point to the existence of a long-forgotten grouping of Florent Schmitt’s mélodies that can stand alongside the song cycles of fellow-French composers Henri Duparc, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Maurice Delage and Louis Aubert.

The grouping of Florent Schmitt mélodies carries the umbrella title “Poèmes des lacs,” and some details about them emerge from two historic documents. 

Florent Schmitt Maurice Ravel joint concert Le Havre France 1907

Maurice Ravel and Florent Schmitt presented their own compositions in a joint concert in Le Havre, France in 1907. In the last work presented on the program, the two composers teamed up to play Schmitt’s Reflets d’Allemagne.

The first document is a program booklet from a 1907 musical event held in Le Havre, France in which Maurice Ravel and Florent Schmitt presented their own piano and vocal compositions. The first half of the program was devoted to Ravel and his music, in which the composer performed several piano solos and accompanied soprano soloist Hélène Luquiens in three of his songs. 

In the second portion of the recital, Florent Schmitt presented a similar program of his own piano and vocal works, with Mlle. Luquiens also participating.  The final portion of the program featured Ravel and Schmitt performing several movements from Schmitt’s Reflets d’Allemagne, a piano duet suite dating from 1905.

Florent Schmitt Maurice Ravel joint performance 1907 Le Havre

Maurice Ravel and Florent Schmitt teamed up in 1907 to present a concert of their original compositions in Le Havre, France. This is the title page from the concert program booklet. (Special thanks to Manuel Cornejo president of the Amis de Maurice Ravel organization, for the upload.)

A rare mint-condition original copy of this program booklet was scanned and uploaded to the Amis de Maurice Ravel website by the society’s president, Manuel Cornejo, in December 2020.  As it turns out, the Le Havre concert was one of several that Ravel and Schmitt presented together — including events held in Paris and in London.  But what is particularly interesting about the Le Havre program is that it included a set of three mélodies by Schmitt grouped under the title “Poèmes des lacs,” with the date of composition listed on the program as 1900.

In actuality, the three mélodies in question weren’t published as a formal set.  Instead, each of them has a distinct opus number in the Schmitt catalogue, even though they were composed at nearly the same time.  Here are the details:

  • Les Barques, Op. 8, composed in 1897
  • Soir sur le lac, Op. 9, composed in 1898
  • Musique sur l’eau, Op. 33, composed in 1898

It raises the question of whether or not these three mélodies were grouped together on the 1907 program simply as a matter of convenience or tidiness. 

Florent Schmitt Les Barques score

The first page of the piano/vocal score to Florent Schmitt’s Les Barques, composed in 1897.

Perhaps that was the case, but coincidentally — just a day or two after the Ravel/Schmitt Le Havre program was uploaded to the Internet — a document written in Florent Schmitt’s own hand was offered for sale on eBay in which the composer makes a similar “Poèmes des lacs” reference — embedded within a three-page letter the composer wrote to an unnamed person who had requested names and dates of Schmitt’s compositions.

Florent Schmitt letter

In this letter penned by Florent Schmitt, he lists the “Poèmes des lacs” — a grouping of mélodies — among his orchestral repertoire.

Although the composer’s letter is undated, we can deduce that it was written prior to 1920, as the letterhead stationery displays what was Schmitt’s St-Cloud address at 10 Rue des Girondins prior to moving to a succession of two homes on Rue du Calvaire beginning in 1920. 

Interestingly, in his listing of compositions in the letter, Schmitt cited the “Poèmes des lacs” as dating from 1898 to 1908 and being scored for voice and orchestra.  Moreover, under his overarching title Schmitt wrote down four pieces rather than three.  Two of them match with the 1907 Le Havre program (Les Barques and Musique sur l’eau), while the other two are new entries:

  • Demande, Op. 20 (also known as Sur le lac de Bourget), composed in 1901
  • Tristesse au jardin, Op. 52, dated 1908 but actually composed in 1897
Florent Schmitt Tristesse au jardin score page

The first page of the score to Florent Schmitt’s Tristesse au jardin, composed in 1897.

What this means is that taken as a whole, apparently there are actually five mélodies that comprise Schmitt’s so-called “Poèmes des lacs” — and at least four of them were also orchestrated by the composer.

Florent Schmitt BiographiesIntrigued by the serendipitous discovery of this information from two different sources, I made contact with several conductors who have devoted significant energies to raising the profile of Schmitt’s artistic legacy:  JoAnn Falletta and Fabien Gabel.  Neither were familiar with the grouping of songs – and indeed, such a formal group isn’t mentioned in any of the biographies of the composer as penned by Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1927), Yves Hucher (1953) and Catherine Lorent (2012).

Florent Schmitt Salome Oriane Falletta Buffalo NAXOSRegardless, it would seem that an interesting discovery of some very rare material is at hand.  Of the five mélodies, only one has achieved any degree of awareness:  Musique sur l’eau. That piece recently received its premiere commercial recording by mezzo-soprano Susan Platts and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta (released in November 2020).  The work had been presented in concert by these same performers in March 2019, and it was also slated for inclusion a May 2020 concert by the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec under the direction of Fabien Gabel – a performance that had to be canceled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Florent Schmitt Musique sur l'eau

The first page of Florent Schmitt’s 1898 vocal composition Musique sur l’eau, from the first edition of the piano/vocal score published by A. Z. Mathot (1913).

Florent Schmitt’s biographer, Yves Hucher, notes that when he was creating Musique sur l’eau, the composer was already adopting the frequent bar changes that would soon become such a trademark of his compositional style:

“When Schmitt resumes the first strophe of the poem, one senses that he will also resume the initial melody, as the attack is the same.  But from the fourth note – perhaps by the completely different accompaniment – the voice forgets this reminder imperceptibly, as if with regret.  In this sense, the composer already testifies to his disdain of repetition – of the easy process — even in the ‘false relation’ of the chord which sustains the final rise.”

Florent Schmitt Musique sur l'eau MathotConductor JoAnn Falletta has characterized Musique sur l’eau as a “gleaming jewel” in the Schmitt catalogue, and listening to the piece, it isn’t difficult to understand why.  Schmitt’s setting of the words of the Symbolist writer Albert Samain is magical in its effect.  It’s little wonder that since its release, the NAXOS premiere recording of the piece has generated near-universal critical accolades.

Happily, in considering the scores of the remaining mélodies, they appear to be as interesting and inventive as Musique sur l’eau.  In addition to the common theme of “water” across all five of the pieces, it’s also clearly evident that Schmitt took great care in selecting his texts, which surely provided the inspiration for writing such particularly effective musical creations.

In his extensive catalogue of works for the human voice, Florent Schmitt typically relied on living (or recently deceased) writers for his texts.  The five mélodies that make up the “Poèmes des lacs” are no exception, with the authors’ texts being published nearly contemporaneously with the music being composed.

Albert Samain French Symbolist Poet

Albert Samain, French Symbolist Poet (1858-1900)

Albert Samain (1858-1900), who penned the words for Musique sur l’eau, was a famed poet and writer of the Symbolist school.  Starting about 1880, Samain’s poetry began to win a following in Parisian avant-garde literary society, with frequent readings  of his poems happening at the Montmartre entertainment establishment Le Chat noir.  The style of Samain’s poems was influenced by the verse of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, with a particular predilection for indeterminate imagery – what the American poet and writer Amy Lawrence Lowell has described as “a nuance … a color … a vague magnificence.” 

Samain died of tuberculosis at a young age, but his artistic achievements were noteworthy – not the least having his poetry set to music by such prominent composers as Lili (and Nadia) Boulanger, Alfredo Casella, Georges Enescu, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Koechlin, Ottorino Respighi, and Camille Saint-Saens in addition to Florent Schmitt.

Henry Gauthier-Villars with Colette 1902

Henry Gauthier-Villars (1855-1931), pictured in 1902 with his wife, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. (Photo: Apic/Getty Images)

Henry ‘Willy’ Gauthier-Villars (1859-1931) was the author of the text used in Schmitt’s Soir sur le lac.  Gauthier-Villars was both a writer and a music critic — and some people have contended that a goodly number of his literary creations were actually the work of other writers in his employ. 

Interestingly, one of these assistants was Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who would take Gauthier-Villars as her first husband.  Gauthier-Villars was a notorious ladies’ man, it appears that he and Colette practiced an early version of an “open marriage,” including each having an affair with the same woman (the American socialite Georgie Urquhart Raoul-Duval) even as the three of them ventured to the Bayreuth Festival together. 

Robert de Montesquieu French poet

Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921)

Even more eyebrow-raising perhaps was the life of Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921), who penned the words to Schmitt’s mélodie Les Barques.  Variously described as an aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy, it’s believed that Montesquiou was the inspiration for the character of Baron de Charlus in Marcel Proust’s seven-volume magnum opus novel Remembrance of Things Past.

While he was sufficiently virile to win a bronze medal in the hunter hack equestrian championship competition at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, aspects of Montesquiou’s personality hinted at other, more intriguing characteristics.  The author William Samson describes him thus: 

“Tall, black-haired, Kaiser-mustachioed, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand—the poseur absolu.  Montesquiou’s homosexual tendencies were patently obvious, but he may in fact have lived a chaste life.  He had no affairs with women, although in 1876 he reportedly once slept with the great actress Sarah Bernhardt, after which he vomited for twenty-four hours (she remained a great friend).”

Impressions of a Montesquiou Soiree Sem

Impressions of a Montesquiou Soirée, drawn by Georges Gourat (aka Sem), a French caricaturist (1902).

Ida Rubinstein

Ida Rubinstein (1885-1960), portrayed in a 1913 painting by Antonio de la Gandara, during which time Robert de Montesquiou was the dancer and dramatic actress’ social champion.

Montesquiou had social relationships (and some artistic collaborations) with many celebrities of the fin de siècle period, including the aforementioned Sarah Bernhardt, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Anna de Noailles, Marthe Bibesco, Luisa Casati and – perhaps most famously – the dancer and dramatic actress Ida Rubinstein, with whom he toured France during World War I, presenting Offrandes blessées, his paean to France’s fallen soldiers. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Montesquiou’s poetry has sometimes been described as “untranslatable” – but that doesn’t prevent it from being the perfect foundation upon which Florent Schmitt could create an exquisite song.

Florent Schmitt Les Barques score

The score for Florent Schmitt’s Les Barques, Op. 8, composed in 1897 and based on the poetry of Robert de Montesquiou.

Laurent Tailhade

Laurent Tailhade (1854-1919)

A world apart from Montesquiou is Laurent Tailhade (1854-1919), whose text was used by Florent Schmitt in Tristesse au jardin.  Tailhade was a satirical poet, essayist and anarchist polemicist who was active in Paris from the 1890s on.  In two volumes of poetry – Au Pays du mufle (“In the Land of the Oaf”) and Imbéciles et gredins (“Fools and Rascals”), Tailhade’s biting wit and verve blended the street slang of Paris’ faubourgs (suburbs) with the polished language of French culture. 

Originally from Haute-Pyrénées (a region where Schmitt owned a country retreat for many decades), it didn’t take long for Tailhade to make his escape to the “big city” where he took up a quintessentially bohemian artist’s lifestyle – in the process befriending writers and poets such as Verlaine and Samain. 

Tailhade was notorious for his anarchist and anticlerical viewpoints, and was even jailed for a time due to his incendiary polemic writings.  (Schmitt, who at times was also wont to push and poke at the sensitivities of “polite society,” seems to have been attracted to fellow-travelers in this regard, including the anarchist writer and cartoonist Charles Sanglier as well as Laurent Tailhade.) 

Tailhade was a colorful character in another sense too, in that he was addicted to opium – an affliction which he proudly admitted, asserting that the substance didn’t cause visions or nightmares, but instead revealed “the less-known parts of the user’s own imagination, memories and personality.”

Florent Schmitt Tristesse au jardin manuscript pages

The first two pages from Florent Schmitt’s original manuscript for Tristesse au jardin, composed in 1897.

Certainly less controversial than Tailhade was the author of the text for the fifth of Florent Schmitt’s works that make up the “Poèmes des lacs” grouping. Actually, comparatively little is known about Jean Forestier, the author who provided the text for Demande (“A Request”) – a piece otherwise known as Sur le lac du Bourget

Robert d'Humieres

Robert d’Humières (1868-1915)

As a mutual friend of Florent Schmitt and the theatre director Robert d’Humières, Forestier is credited with facilitating the introduction of the two men after d’Humières had been favorably impressed by Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII at its 1906 Paris premiere and wished to collaborate with Schmitt on a planned mimed drama at the Théatre des Arts, La Tragédie de Salomé — a development that would turn into a fortuitous collaboration for both artists.

Regarding the text that Forestier provided for Demande, set to music by Schmitt in 1901, the composer’s biographer, Yves Hucher, has stated:

“… The piece is remarkably written for the voice.  The love poem – something found quite rarely in the work of Florent Schmitt – is a cry of passion that, by virtue of its harmonic boldness, easily foresees the great pieces that were soon to come [from the composer’s pen].”

Taken as a group, then, what we have is a series of five fascinating “lake works” created over the period 1897-1901, with four of them subsequently orchestrated by the composer.  Predating Schmitt’s longstanding relationship with Durand et Cie., publication of the pieces were entrusted to four different publishing houses, as follows:

  • Mathot for Musique sur l’eau and Tristesse au jardin
  • Deiss for Les Barques
  • Grus for Soir sur le lac
  • Hamelle for Demande

Durand Salabert EschigResiding at multiple publishers rather than all at a single house has worked against viewing the pieces as a set – and it has also hindered the availability of the scores in the ensuing decades.  The Mathot and Deiss imprints have been folded into Durand-Salabert-Eschig (Universal), while the Grus imprint is now part of Editions Lemoine.  As for Hamelle, it is now part of Editions Leduc. 

What’s even more challenging, only two of the five pieces (both with Universal) appear to be in print today — and as for the other three, they’ve been out of print for decades.

What about Schmitt’s orchestrations of four of the five works?  We know that the parts for Musique sur l’eau are held by Universal, as they were supplied to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for its concerts and subsequent recording session in March 2019.  As for the other three orchestrated pieces, in a comprehensive listing of Schmitt’s compositions compiled in 1961, the orchestrations for those are shown as “unavailable.”

Fabien Gabel French conductor

Fabien Gabel

Undeterred, the conductor Fabien Gabel, one of Florent Schmitt über-evangelists, is undertaking an effort to track down the missing orchestral parts, with the goal of eventually performing and possibly recording the music.  We certainly wish him success in this endeavor. 

And in the meantime … here’s hoping that some of Schmitt’s most ardent champions in the vocal world will also see fit to study and perform these gems in their original versions with piano.  Who’s game for that?


Florent Schmitt and the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors

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The elderly composer chaired the jury at the Besançon’s first competition in 1951.

Bensancon Music Festival Poster 2019

A large wall poster advertising the 2019 Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors.

These days there’s certainly no dearth of international competitions for young and emerging conductors.  No fewer than 30 such events are open to contenders from all over the world. 

Add in a number of similar competitions that are national rather than international in scope, and it’s quite an extensive list.

Interestingly, the copious quantity of competitions is a fairly recent development.  By my rough count, approximately 40% of the international conductor competitions were established in 2010 or more recently.  By contrast, the number of competitions that existed before 1980 is much fewer – just five.

Some of the competitions are named after important musical personages of the past – luminaries such as orchestra directors Arthur Nikisch, Herbert von Karajan, Arturo Toscanini, Guido Cantelli, Jesús López-Cobos, Antal Doráti, Sir Georg Solti, Lovro von Matačić, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Yevgeny Svetlanov and Nikolai Malko

Other competitions carry the names of composers like Béla Bartók, Aram Khachaturian and Gustav Mahler

A few of them date back 40 years or longer — such as the Cantelli Conducting Competition (established in 1961), the Malko Competition for Young Conductors (begun in 1965) and the Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors (first held in 1979).

But the granddaddy of them all has to be the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors, which dates all the way back to 1951.  In the seven decades since, winning or placing in the Besançon Competition has launched many a career for conductors to make their mark in international concertizing and recording. 

Among the most notable first-prize winners of the Besançon Competition are the following maestros:

Besancon International Festival of Music logoThe Besançon story actually begins in 1948, several years before the inaugural conducting competition was established.  That’s when the Besançon Franche-Comté International Music Festival was organized by a committee of renowned musicians headed by French conductor Gaston Poulet, the Festival’s first artistic director.  (Poulet was then serving as the chief conductor of the Concerts Colonne Orchestra in Paris.)

Besancon Music Festival Program 1949

A vintage copy of the program for the 1949 Festival International de Musique de Besançon Franche-Comté — the second annual event.

Since 1948, the Besançon Music Festival has taken place yearly every September – a unbroken string of annual events until 2020’s cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Besançon is arguably one of the top three annual music festivals held in France – the other two being La Chaise-Dieu and the St-Denis.  While the Besançon Festival encompasses nearly all forms of classical music including solo recitals and chamber music concerts, it is best-known for its orchestral presentations, which have been led over by some of the world’s most famous conductors such as Rafael Kubelik, Igor Markevitch, Carl Schuricht, Wilhelm Furtwängler, André Cluytens, Lorin Maazel and Charles Dutoit, among others.

Emile Vuillermoz

Émile-Jean-Joseph Vuillermoz (1878-1960)

Against this backdrop, the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors was established in 1951 on the initiative of the French music scholar and critic Émile Vuillermoz.  Originally an annual competition with two categories of participation – amateur and professional conductors – the “pro/am” distinction was dropped in 1974.  Since 1992 the competition has taken place every two years.

For the very first Besançon competition held in 1951, the jury empaneled to adjudicate the candidates’ performances was chaired by the French composer Florent Schmitt

The selection of Schmitt to chair the jury was a logical one.  By then over 80 years of age, Schmitt was the undisputed doyen of French composers.  (Only Gustave Charpentier, at age 91, was older than Schmitt, but Charpentier hadn’t been active as a composer for more than three decades.) 

Florent Schmitt 1953 photo

Florent Schmitt seated at the doorway to his study at his home in St-Cloud, France. This photograph was taken around the time Schmitt served as the jury chairperson at the first Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors (1951). (Photo: ©1953 Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet)

Composers Conduct Schmitt Roussel Ravel Elgar UraniaMoreover, Schmitt was an accomplished conductor himself, having led numerous concerts of his music in France and elsewhere over the years.  Schmitt’s most recent international conducting engagements had been in Brazil in 1949, where he was invited by Heitor Villa-Lobos to lead his Psaume XLVII plus several other of his own compositions with ensembles in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Reinhard Peters German Conductor

Reinhard Peters (1926-2008)

The winner of the Besançon’s inaugural conducting competition in 1951 was the German conductor Reinhard Peters.  If he isn’t particularly well-known today, it is because Maestro Peters focused mainly on leading opera productions in his native country – serving as music director first at the Deutscher Oper am Rhein, then at the Münster Theatre, and finally at the Deutscher Oper Berlin beginning in 1970. 

Away from the opera stage, during the 1970s Peters was music director of the Philharmonia Hungarica in the orchestra’s adopted German city of Marl, as well as serving as a regular guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and other German orchestras. 

Martha Argerich Reinhard Peters Mozart Doremi

Martha Argerich’s 1966 live performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with the Hamburg Radio Symphony conducted by Reinhard Peters has been released on the Doremi label.

As for his rather scant work in the recording studio, Maestro Peters collaborated with operatic soloists Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Rita Streich and Ernst Haefliger plus guitarist Siegfried Behrend and violist Atar Arad in several well-received releases on the Decca/London, DGG and Telefunken labels. 

Sir Alexander Gibson Scottish conductor

The 1951 runner-up at Besançon: Sir Alexander Gibson (1926-1995).

Unfortunately, having been injured in a traffic accident while on holiday in France in the mid-1990s impeded Peters’ ability to conduct in subsequent years.  In all, his was a modest career by international standards – but certainly a respectable one. 

On the other hand, Sir Alexander Gibson, the runner-up at the 1951 Besançon Competition, enjoyed greater international success in his career including being credited for a number of highly regarded orchestral recordings on the British Decca label in the 1960s — several of which are considered touchstone interpretations.

Sibelius Gibson RCA Victor

A critically acclaimed recording of Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 featuring Sir Alexander Gibson and the London Symphony Orchestra (American release by RCA Victor, 1960).

While additional composers were selected to chair Besançon juries following Florent Schmitt at the 1951 inaugural competition – notably Henri Büsser, Max d’Ollone and Marius Constant – in more recent years the competition has chosen internationally renowned conductors rather than composers to chair the juries. 

Here is the impressive list of the Besançon jury chairpersons empaneled since 2000:

Paul Daniel British conductor

The British conductor Paul Daniel is the jury chairperson for the 2021 Besançon Competition for Young Conductors.

As for its standing among the numerous international conducting competitions now being held, the Besançon prize continues to be one of the most coveted. The competition attracts hundreds of participants from all over the world — not just for the €12,000 in prize money but also for the substantial international notoriety and prestige that comes with winning. 

Typically, 250 or more contenders appear before the Besançon jury during each competition. These days, the preliminary rounds of the competition are held at six locations across the world (in Berlin, Beijing, London and Montréal in addition to Paris and Besançon in France).  The preliminary live auditions are performed with piano-duo accompaniment, while the final round in Besançon for the 20 finalists employs two French orchestras. 

Importantly – and unlike other conductor competitions – the candidate selection and adjudication process is based not on documentation (biography and/or video footage), but on the live auditions exclusively. The only “proviso” is that each contender must be under the age of 35 to participate.

Nodoka Okisawa Japanese conductor

Nodoka Okisawa, winner of the most recent Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors (2019).

With the large number of conducting competitions today, one might wonder how many of them will successfully achieve long-term viability and success.  After all, some have withered or died on the vine after an initial flurry of interest. 

But that fate doesn’t seem to be in the cards for the Besançon Competition. Indeed, the 2021 event will be its 57th one — and all signs point to many more happening in the future.

Israeli pianist and pedagogue Tomer Lev talks about planning and producing the new NAXOS recording of the Tombeau de Claude Debussy (1920) complete anthology.

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Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy NAXOS“What stands out in Schmitt’s work is the hypnotic-impressionist atmosphere, verging on the surreal. Both the atmospherics and the piano writing … hint very strongly at Debussy’s own aesthetic world.  It creates a kind of spiritual dialogue that Schmitt conducts with his late older colleague.”

— Tomer Lev, pianist and pedagogue

In late 2020, NAXOS released a new recording of Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy that is the first one to include the full scope of the anthology in addition to the two fully fledged larger pieces that stemmed from it.  Interestingly, the new recording appeared exactly a century after the Tombeau‘s original publication. 

The Tombeau anthology was a cooperative effort of ten composers who, in 1920, were commissioned by the newly formed French periodical La Revue musicale to create short pieces in memory of the great Claude Debussy, one of France’s greatest composers and who had died two years earlier in the final days of the First World War. The initiative was the brainchild of Henry Prunières, founder and publisher of the monthly magazine.

The ten composers who agreed to participate in the Tombeau anthology represented the “cream of the crop” of composers active at the time:

  • Béla Bartók
  • Paul Dukas
  • Manuel de Falla
  • Sir Eugene Goossens
  • Gian Francesco Malipiero
  • Maurice Ravel
  • Albert Roussel
  • Erik Satie
  • Florent Schmitt
  • Igor Stravinsky
Henry Prunieres 1935 photo

Henry Prunières, photographed in 1935 at his editor’s desk at La Revue musicale. Prunières (1886-1942) founded the magazine in 1920, which was published until the onset of World War II. A magazine with high journalistic standards and meticulous production values, It remains a valuable reference resource for music specialists today.

The Tombeau was quite a remarkable undertaking for a young publication that had only been launched that very same year.  Even though a Parisian-based magazine was spearheading the project, only half of the participating composers were native-born Frenchmen, which made this musical anthology perhaps the first truly transnational one ever to appear. 

And while the Tombeau has hovered on the edges of the repertoire — and the original set and quite a few of its individual numbers have been recorded several times — the NAXOS recording is the first one to encompass not just the original anthology of ten short pieces but also the two substantial additional works that subsequently sprang from it, all in one album.

Tomer Lev

Tomer Lev (Photo: ©Michael Pavia)

La Revue musicale would commission works from other composers during its consequential 20-year publication run — some 160 compositions in all.  But the Debussy tributes remain among the most important of these endeavors. Perhaps it took an equally intrepid personage to follow in Henry Prunière’s footsteps 100 years later by producing and performing the first “fully comprehensive” recording of Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy.  That gentleman is Tomer Lev, a pianist and pedagogue who heads the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Israel’s leading conservatory and the main “talent feeder” for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Educated in Israel and the United States, Tomer Lev has had an interesting and versatile career, performing all over the world as both a piano soloist and chamber musician.  He is a former member of the Israel Piano Trio and continues to collaborate with all major Israeli orchestras as well as several European ensembles.  In addition, he is a well-known and respected author and pedagogue. Working with the musicians at the Buchmann-Mehta School, Mr. Lev has accomplished what might easily have been impossible to realize in the hands of others. 

The new NAXOS recording reveals to us some truly treasurable musical moments — one of which is Florent Schmitt’s contribution to the anthology.  Titled Et Pan, au fond des blés lunaires, s’accouda …, it is one of the brightest jewels in the set — and a work that captures so effectively Debussyian atmospherics without sounding in any way derivative. 

Indeed, Schmitt’s own distinctive musical personality is also on firm display — a perfect blending, if you will, of the two artists’ individual musical personas.

Recording Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy NAXOS

Recording Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy, released on the NAXOS label in late 2020 (digital download) and January 2021 (CD).

Being highly impressed by both the quality of the performances as well as the production values of the recording, I contacted Mr. Lev to learn more about how the project came into being.  As part of our interview, I also asked him to share his perspectives on Florent Schmitt’s contribution to the Tombeau.  Highlights of our very interesting discussion are presented below.

PLN:  When did you first encounter the music of Florent Schmitt, and his contribution to Le  Tombeau de Claude Debussy in particular?

TL:  The first time I came across Florent Schmitt’s music was while I was studying in New York. On one of my drives to the campus I heard on WQXR radio a magical slow movement for piano and strings that I had never encountered before. The uniquely special sounds I heard included the throbbing effects of muted strings, hypnotic bells, marvelous piano sonorities, ecstatic crescendos, and unconventional combinations between the instruments.

Florent Schmitt

Musical quotation from the Piano Quintet by Florent Schmitt, completed in 1908.

Of course, I had to stay in the car until the end of the whole piece to learn what it was, and then found out that it was Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet. It was a complete “knockout” experience.  Then and there, I promised myself that one day I would play this piece. Luckily, my wish came true a few years later when I returned to my home country.

Shortly after hearing the Quintet — and still during my studies in America — I also got to know the Tombeau de Claude Debussy cycle. I fell completely in love with the movement that Schmitt had contributed to this very special anthology. Unlike the relatively short pieces created by the other composers, Schmitt’s contribution was marvelous in its extensive dimensions and its pianistic demands.

It’s the enchanted atmosphere of Pan in the moonlit nocturnal fields that draws the listener to a magical and unfamiliar world. I have no doubt that in terms of the scope of the piece — its requirements and its depth — this is one of the biggest highlights of the entire cycle.  Speaking personally, it’s a particular favorite of mine.

This is relatively unknown music, but most everyone who listens to the entire cycle responds with astonishment when it’s the turn of Schmitt’s music to be heard.

PLN:  What drew you to this particular “omnibus” set of pieces?  How did you discover the music, and how long did you research and study the pieces before you decided to program them for the first time?

TL:  It began 27 years ago when I was a young doctoral student in New York City.  Out of endless curiosity I began to investigate the rich musical archives of the “Big Apple” in order to find rare repertoire discoveries for my instrument, the piano.

During these searches I was pleasantly surprised to encounter quite a number of joint compositions, written by more than one composer, that had been commissioned for special occasions. This relatively rare branch of the repertoire intrigued me, as I found these collective compositions to be fascinating mirrors of the periods and places in which they were created.

Later, these anthologies became part of my formal doctoral research, and I even included some of the pieces in my doctoral recitals.

In 1993, at the New York Public Library I came across a December 1920 issue of the Parisian magazine La Revue musicale, dedicated to the memory Claude Debussy. As a special appendix to this issue I found a faded score of Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy — a set of compositions especially commissioned by the magazine from Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók, Satie, de Falla, Dukas and others.

It was an immense excitement for me to study the Tombeau score; shortly afterwards I performed the eight solo piano pieces of the anthology in my final graduation recital. This was followed by a performance of all ten compositions of the original collection at Swiss Radio a year later.

Ever since then, I had kept dreaming about creating a commercial album of this rare collection for a major label — to include not just the piano pieces but also the other works. But young people’s dreams are often pushed aside as “real life” intrudes and takes much of their energies and time. This was also the case with me.

PLN:  How did the NAXOS recording opportunity come about, then?

TL:  A few years ago I realized that the 100th anniversary of the composition of the Tombeau was approaching. This was a signal for me to get into a ‘now-or-never’ mode. I contacted NAXOS and presented my dream to them.  To my immense gratitude, I found great partners in making this long-overdue project come to fruition.

But getting a label onboard was only one side of the equation.  I also needed 28 other musicians to join with me in realizing the full project.

Tombeau de Claude Debussy musicians NAXOS

Several of the musicians and producers confer during the recording sessions for Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy, released on the NAXOS label in late 2020 (digital download) and January 2021 (CD).

Luckily, I have dynamic, curious and open-minded colleagues and absolutely brilliant students at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University, Israel’s leading conservatory where I have taught for many years. So it was a relatively easy task to convince additional musicians to join the project — no doubt aided by the high quality of the music itself as well, as the feeling of anticipation and excitement that “we can do something quite original and different here.”

Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy track listing NAXOS

PLN:  Thinking about the various musical numbers that make up the Tombeau, which ones do you consider to be the most substantive – the ones that speak to you particularly strongly?

Paul Dakas, French Composer

Paul Dukas (1965-1935)

TL:  All of the pieces of the cycle are of high quality and it was truly a privilege to be able to perform and record them all. But personally speaking, I’m particularly amazed by the contributions of Paul Dukas and Florent Schmitt.  Both of their pieces are exquisite in taste, highly sophisticated in harmony, and positively hypnotic in their atmosphere.

The piano writing is also of the highest order; these two chaps seem to have had a real intimate knowledge of the keyboard and its full potential!

Florent Schmitt Et Pan score cover

A Tomer Lev favorite: Florent Schmitt’s contribution to Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy was later published as the first of Schmitt’s two Mirages, Op. 70. It was also orchestrated by the composer several years later.

PLN:  Regarding Florent Schmitt’s piece, are there any aspects of the musical style and the way that the work is constructed that you find particularly noteworthy — or possibly unique? 

TL:  What stands out in Schmitt’s work is the hypnotic-impressionist atmosphere, verging on the surreal. Both the atmospherics and the piano writing — as well as some specific references to Pan/Faune and the moonlight — hint very strongly at Debussy’s own aesthetic world.  It creates a kind of spiritual dialogue that Schmitt conducts with his late older colleague.

Claude-Achille Debussy, French composer

Achille-Claude Debussy. Florent Schmitt (b. 1870) was born in between Debussy (b. 1862) and Maurice Ravel (b. 1875), but would outlive both composers by decades.

Reflets dans l’eau, Clair de Lune and L’isle joyeuse — all iconic works by Debussy written for the piano — may be the immediate associations evoked by Schmitt in his piece, but he does so without giving up his own personal style which is, by nature, heavier, denser and darker than Debussy’s. The result is a fascinating and attractive stylistic “blend” which illuminates in an unconventional way the familiar world of Debussy – but also in an intriguing new light through the darker, denser prisms of Schmitt.

PLN:  Have you performed other music by Florent Schmitt, such as solo piano works or chamber pieces?

TL:  As I’ve mentioned, I’ve had the privilege of performing Schmitt’s Piano Quintet several times. I also performed (unfortunately just once) Schmitt’s sophisticated and witty piece for piano, flute, violin and cello titled Pour presque tous les temps [Quartet for Almost All the Time] dating from 1956. In that piece, Schmitt is revealed in a completely different light: clever, light-hearted, and prone to neoclassical textures.

French composer Florent Schmitt circa 1920

Florent Schmitt, photographed at about the time he composed his contribution to Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy.

I know that the three works I’ve played by Schmitt are just a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of compositions he created. I certainly hope to play and teach more of his works in the future.

PLN:  Thinking broadly about the music of Florent Schmitt, how would you characterize its artistic importance in its own time?

TL:  Schmitt is perhaps the most striking example of a natural synthesis between the French and German aesthetic worlds — a synthesis that most French composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries attempted to achieve, each according to his taste and aesthetic tendencies (and with varying degrees of success).  

Gabriel Faure, French composer

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), Florent Schmitt’s teacher and mentor.

Debussy, for instance, started out as a Wagnerian, but was then startled by the over-emotionality that “threatened” him and escaped to brighter and more “Gaelic” worlds. Fauré also had a complex dialogue with Wagner, preserving some of Wagner’s chromatic discoveries, but replanting them on more “archaic” modal grounds and in a neo-classical “Parnassian” atmosphere.

Ravel was also attracted to the German, post-Wagnerian harmonic world, but from a very early stage in his career seemed somewhat wary of its Romantic “density.”

Amidst the aesthetic struggles that characterized this generation of French composers, Schmitt seems to hold a unique position in his attempt to successfully merge the two worlds with far fewer inner conflicts — seemingly taking the best of both worlds and more eclectically finding their potential points of connection.

PLN:  Can you share a little information with us about your background as a musician?

Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy recording sessions NAXOS

Listening to playbacks in the control room during the recording sessions for Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy (2020).

TL:  I am a third-generation musician, and music runs in the veins of both sides of my family — one branch coming from Vienna and the other from Upper Silesia, a German-Polish region which has changed hands many times over the years. I started playing the piano at the age of five and began composing music shortly thereafter. My first composition was performed in public at the age of 12. Later, I focused on the piano and consequently neglected the composition.

After years of playing as a solo pianist, including with many orchestras around the world, I decided to settle back in Tel Aviv, my hometown, and develop a more diverse and versatile musical career that includes performing, teaching, lecturing about music, producing, and directing as well.

PLN:  Do you find yourself drawn to certain composers, or certain musical styles and eras? Is there anyone or anything you “champion” in your work, particularly?

TL:  I love to play, teach and listen to all types of good music. For me, there are only two types: good and challenging music, and less-good and less-challenging music. As long as there is beauty and challenge in the music that I perform or teach, I do not care at all who the composer is, whether the person is famous or forgotten, what period they are from, or what their nationality is.

My motto is, as the Brits say, “The proof is (always) in the pudding.”

PLN:  What are your current activities and positions in music education?

Tel Aviv University logoTL:  In 2004, together with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, I was one of the founders of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, which today is Israel’s leading institution for higher education in music, jointly run by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Philharmonic. I’ve headed the institution to the present day. Together with Maestro Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, I have the duty and privilege to nourish the next generation of Israel’s elite musicians, and especially a young cadre of players for the IPO.

Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Tel Aviv

Opened in 2005, the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music is affiliated with Tel Aviv University and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Tomer Lev is head of the institution.

I always try (sometimes with difficulty!) to balance my activities as a pedagogue and as a concert artist.  I also try to find time to perform with my more advanced students, especially within the framework of the MultiPiano Ensemble – a modular group of young pianists that specializes in the rich and fascinating repertoire for several pianos.

In this framework, we have toured on four continents and have collaborated with some of the most important orchestras in the world — among them the IPO, the Royal Philharmonic in London, and the English Chamber Orchestra.

PLN:  Do you have plans to perform any of Florent Schmitt’s music in the future? Are there particular works by this composer that particularly interest you?

Florent Schmitt: Symphonie Concertante scoreTL:  There are quite a few piano works by Schmitt that I would love to delve into, perform and teach. One of them, the Symphonie concertante for piano and orchestra, attracts me the most.  It’s an utterly fascinating and challenging piece that I would love to play at the first realistic opportunity!

PLN:  What other notable artistic projects or performances do you have coming up?

TL:  At the moment, the big project is the new album dedicated to the Tombeau de Claude Debussy that has just been released by NAXOS.

As for future activities, coming up in April the Hyperion label is planning to release an all-Mozart album featuring our MultiPiano Ensemble with the English Chamber Orchestra. Aside from the two famous Mozart concertos for two and three pianos (K. 242 and K. 365), this release will include the world premiere recording of the 1781 Larghetto and Allegro for two pianos and orchestra. It’s a beautiful fragment that Mozart left unfinished, and I have been privileged to be the one to complete it and orchestrate it.

MultiPiano Musicians

The musicians of the MultiPiano Ensemble.

Then in the summer will be the release of another MultiPiano album — this one with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra that will include the Double Concerto of Francis Poulenc as well as new versions that I’ve created of the beautiful Symphonie concertante by Frank Martin (originally for piano, harpsichord, harp and orchestra but now in a new version for three pianos and orchestra), plus the Shostakovich Concertino for two pianos and strings.

Aryah Levanon Israeli composer

Aryeh Levanon

To those, we’re adding a specially commissioned Israeli work by Aryeh Levanon for two pianos/eight hands and strings.  It will be quite an adventurous voyage into the 20th century treasure-box!

PLN:  As we wrap up, are there any other final comments you would like to make about Florent Schmitt and his artistry?

TL:  Just this: Florent Schmitt is one of the composers who unfortunately has not received the status he’s entitled to in the concert halls. I salute you and the website you have created for the tremendous effort you are making to bring the music world to a deeper awareness and realization of the attractive and complex world of Schmitt.

________________________

Tomer Lev’s words about the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog are very much appreciated, but the real credit goes to musicians like him and others who are actively exploring, performing and recording Florent Schmitt’s extraordinary body of work. 

Le Tombeau de Debussy Buchmann-Mehta Tomer LevFor those interested in learning more about the Tombeau de Claude Debussy project, this 10-minute video produced by the Buchmann-Mehta School and narrated by Tomer Lev is well-worth viewing

We also look forward to the future prospects of Mr. Lev presenting more of Florent Schmitt’s music — including the remarkable Symphonie concertante.

___________________________

Update (2/2/21):  Shortly after this article was published, I was contacted by Richard Cameron-Wolfe, an American composer, pianist, pedagogue and arts administrator, who reported on several additional pieces that were created as part of the original Tombeau project, but for whatever reason weren’t included in the published anthology.

Richard Cameron-Wolfe

Richard Cameron-Wolfe

According to Mr. Cameron-Wolfe, the first performance of the ten works that had appeared in the December 2020 special supplement in La Revue musicale special supplement happened at a Paris concert held on January 24, 1921.  That concert also included four additional pieces written in memory of Debussy, as follows:

  • Gabriel Grovlez: Sarabande for piano
  • Jean Huré: Barcarolle for piano
  • Charles Koechlin: La Paix du soir au cimetière for piano
  • Leo Sachs : Élegie for string quartet
Evelyn Lear American soprano

Evelyn Lear (1926-2012)

Cameron-Wolfe also reports that during the inaugural season of the Music from Angel Fire festival, held in 1984, the ten published pieces of the anthology were presented in concert along with the two additional works by Grovlez and Koechlin.  (Unfortunately, the scores by Huré and Sachs could not be located, so other representative works by these composers were presented on the program.)  At the Angel Fire performance, the soprano soloist in the Erik Satie contribution to the Tombeau was the famed Evelyn Lear.

Music from Angel Fire Festival Poster 1984

The official poster for the inaugural season of the Music from Angel Fire festival, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1984).

More insights about the various facets of the 1920 Debussy memorial tribute are included in a 2019 dissertation by Tristan Paré-Morin, titled Sounding Nostalgia in Post-World War I Paris, which can be viewed here.

In a concert season upended by COVID-19, Florent Schmitt’s original scoring of La Tragédie de Salomé (1907) gets its moment in the sun at last.

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The 2020-21 season includes performances of the small-orchestra version in Japan, Germany and France.

Florent Schmitt Tragedie de Salome Davin Marco PoloAs is so well-known to music-lovers everywhere, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on concert-going the world over.  For too many orchestras and chamber ensembles, the entire 2020-21 season has been a total bust — or at the very least, upended in dramatic ways.

It’s a particularly disappointing turn of events for those composers who were celebrating birthday anniversary milestones during the season — not least the French composer Florent Schmitt, born in 1870 and whose 150th birthday anniversary fell in 2020.

It’s no coincidence that more concerts featuring Schmitt’s orchestral music had been planned for the 2020-21 season than in any season since the composer’s death back in 1958.  Unfortunately, nearly all of these performances have had to be canceled or postponed.

But while the overall picture is discouraging, there has been a silver lining of sorts. 

Quite a few symphony orchestras have gone about “reimagining” their concert seasons to present music that calls for smaller instrumental forces, allowing for appropriate distancing on the stage. This has opened the door to pieces that aren’t typically presented in regular symphony seasons.  Speaking personally, I’ve had the pleasure of watching streamed concerts of unusual fare such as Sir Granville Bantock’s late-career Celtic Symphony (scored just for strings along with a bevy of harps). 

Loie Fuller Florent Schmitt Salome 1907 Paris

A promotional poster for the original 1907 production of Florent Schmitt’s ballet La Tragédie de Salomé, starring the American-born dancer Loïe Fuller.

Another piece that has “benefited” from the coronavirus pandemic is the original version of Florent Schmitt’s ballet La Tragédie de Salomé, dating from 1907.  Salomé may be Schmitt’s best-known orchestral work, but the version most people know is a reworking of the score for large orchestra, in which the composer shortened the music by about half while substantially augmenting the number of instrumentalists. 

Gabriel Pierne French composer and conductor

Gabriel Pierné (1963-1937) led the first concert performance of the 1910 reworking of Florent Schmitt’s La Tragédie de Salomé at the Concerts Colonne in Paris (1911). (Photo: Wilhelm Benque, 1898)

This “famous” Salomé was composed in 1910, dedicated to Igor Stravinsky, and began life in 1911 in the concert hall rather than the ballet stage, with the Colonne Concerts orchestra led by composer-conductor Gabriel Pierné

The newer version has also been staged as a ballet, beginning in 1912 with a production featuring the prima ballerina Natalia Trouhanova.  It was added by Serge Diaghilev to the Ballets-Russes’ repertoire in 1913, along with being revived regularly on various Paris stages through the 1950s.  In more recent years, the 1910 version of the ballet has been staged in Germany, Italy and Russia.

Theatre Hebertot

The interior of the Théàtre des Arts (now named Théàtre Hébertot), where Florent Schmitt’s ballet La Tragédie de Salomé was first mounted in 1907.

But the original 1907 version of La Tragédie de Salomé is a fascinating score as well — and some ways more so, considering the restrictions under which the piece was created. 

Theatre Hebertot Paris

The Théâtre des Arts today. The 1838 building, located in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris, still serves its original purpose as a playhouse but is now known as the Théâtre Hébertot.

Schmitt composed the music for Robert d’Humières and his conception of the Salome story, which was mounted at the Théàtre des Arts (now known as the Théàtre Hébertot) in Paris.  Reportedly, d’Humières had been completely smitten by Schmitt’s blockbuster score Psaume XLVII when he heard it at the piece’s December 1906 premiere.  Through a mutual friend, the writer Jean Forestier, d’Humières reached out to the composer shortly thereafter to offer the Salomé commission. 

Robert d'Humieres

Robert d’Humières (1868-1915)

Due to the small size of the theatre’s stage and orchestra pit, Schmitt was forced to write music for no more than 20 players (plus an offstage soprano).  What’s quite amazing is the degree to which Schmitt was able to conjure up an astonishing array of colors and drama while utilizing such a small group of instrumentalists. 

There’s no question that the music Schmitt created added much to the mimed drama of d’Humières and the portrayal of the heroine by the American-born dancer Loïe Fuller — famous for her scarves and lighting effects.

Tragedie de Salome 1907 Program Cover

The program cover for the original production of La Tragédie de Salomé (1907).

Loie Fuller

American-born actress and dancer Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), famous for her scarves and lighting effects.

Running for more than 50 performances, the 1907 Salomé was an artistic and commercial success for all of the key personnel involved:  d’Humières, Fuller and Schmitt in addition to a then-very-young Désiré Inghelbrecht who conducted the orchestra.

There’s no question that Florent Schmitt’s 1910 reworking of La Tragédie de Salomé produced a tighter score along with the kind of “orientalist opulence” in the grandest Rimsky-Korsakov tradition that only a full symphony orchestra could deliver.  And yet … the original score contains passages of music which are every bit as effective — and highly interesting musically — which didn’t make it into the revised version. 

Desire Inghelbrecht

Désiré Inghelbrecht (1885-1965)

As for what happened next, the original score disappeared from view for more than 70 years, even as Schmitt’s 1910 version was published by Durand and went on to become the composer’s most celebrated orchestral work.

The original manuscript score eventually made its way to the Bibliothèque National de France in Paris, where it was rediscovered decades after the composer’s death and recorded in 1993 on the Marco Polo label.  The conductor on that recording (the only commercial one to date) was Patrick Davin, a Belgian musician well-known for championing lesser known repertoire. 

Patrick Davin Belgian conductor

Patrick Davin (1962-2020)

Schmitt’s manuscript has also been converted to a modern score which is available for rental from the BnF. What the COVID-19 crisis has shown us is that the small-orchestra version of Salomé is a very good fit for orchestras that are seeking pieces scored for reduced forces. Sure enough, the piece has already appeared on two programs this season and is slated for more later in the year.

Sinfonia ShizuokaThe first presentation was done by the Sinfonietta Shizuoka in Tokyo, Japan on November 4, 2020, under the direction of Tomoya Nakagawa.  Maestro Nakahara studied in France where he became acquainted with lesser-known French scores, and he has championed this sort of repertoire since returning to Japan.  In fact, this is the second time that the original version of Salomé has been presented by these same musical forces (the first time was in 2015). 

On the same November 2020 concert as the Schmitt, Nakakara programmed the Petite symphonie of Joseph-Guy Ropartz, and later this season he is planning on presenting Schmitt’s Janiana Symphony for strings.

Sinfonietta Shizuoka Nakahara Florent Schmitt Ropartz Salome

The Sinfonietta Shizuoka under the direction of Tomoya Nakahara present the original 1907 version of Florent Schmitt’s La Tragédie de Salomé to a small socially distanced audience (Tokyo, November 4, 2020).

Portions of the Sinfonietta Shizuoka’s November performance, encompassing slightly less than half of the Salomé score, have been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed here.  Viewing the concert, we can see that Nakagawa has adhered strictly to Schmitt’s instrumentation; there are just 20 performers on the stage.  So we can imagine that this performance sounds very close to what the audience at the Théàtre des Arts would have heard back in 1907.

Such a measure of historical accuracy hasn’t been adhered to in a subsequent performance of the original version, presented on January 21, 2021 by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of its music director-designate Alain Altinoglu.  That performance, which was filmed for streaming and can be viewed here, employs closer to 40 players rather than 20. 

But where the Frankfurt presentation might deviate from the number of players called for in the original score, it is faithful to using an offstage soprano — unlike in the Shizuoka performance, where the vocal lines are played by the oboe.

Alain Altinoglu French conductor Ben Knabe

Music director-designate Alain Altinloglu leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in the 1907 original version of Florent Schmitt’s ballet La Tragédie de Salomé. (Photo: ©Ben Knabe, January 21, 2021)

The Altinoglu/Frankfurt RSO performance is beautifully structured and played with real polish.  Indeed, it is demonstrably superior to the Marco Polo recording in nearly every aspect.  The success of the Frankfurt rendition shouldn’t comes as a surprise, in that Maestro Altinoglu has been a champion of Florent Schmitt’s Salomé ballet for more than a decade.  He has presented the 1910 version in concert in Europe and the United States (at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012), and he has also included the score in his classes for conducting students at the Paris Conservatoire.  With such passionate advocacy for the music, it seems only natural that he would also want to program the 1907 score — and that he would do the job exceedingly well.

Julien Masmondet French conductor

Julien Masmondet

But this season’s presentations of the 1907 score don’t end there.  Ensemble Les Apaches, a French chamber orchestra founded and directed by Julien Masmondet, also has plans to present the original 1907 version in France in November and December 2021.  Those concerts will be presented at the Théàtre de l’Athenée in Paris and at several other opera houses and theatres elsewhere in the country. 

Ensemble Les Apaches

Ensemble Les Apaches

Dates and details are still being finalized, and the information will be updated just as soon as the schedule is set.

 

Florent Schmitt and the piano collection à l’Exposition: Musical vignettes of the Paris Exposition of 1937 (La Retardée).

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a l'Exposition Illustrations Musicales 1937 Deiss

Florent Schmitt 1937 photo

Florent Schmitt, photographed at his home in St-Cloud in 1937. (Photo: Lipnitzki-Roger Viollet)

For students of history, the International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life — colloquially known as the Paris Exposition of 1937 — is one of those events that’s been the subject of much sociological dissection, seeing as it was the last great transnational gathering held on the European continent prior to the onset of World War II. 

As such, the Paris Expo served as a backdrop for the dueling political ideologies of the time — with fascist and communist nations in particular spotlighting themselves via Tarzanesque displays of strength as they vied for the attentions — and validation — of fairgoers.

Paris Exposition Festivals of Lights 1937

The Festivals of Lights at the 1937 Paris Exposition.

Of course, the Paris Exposition was about more than technology, commerce and politics; there were generous lashings of cultural offerings that were part of the Expo experience as well. 

From a musical standpoint in particular, the Paris Exposition is best remembered for the Fêtes de la lumières (Festivals of Lights), which consisted of evening choreographed spectacles of water, lights and music held on the banks of the Seine River. Those multimedia events are described in detail in this article on the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog — and the story makes for fascinating reading. 

Marguerite Long French Pianist

French pianist Marguerite Long (1874-1966). (1920 photo)

Less known is a more modest musical undertaking that involved the Parisian publisher Raymond Deiss (whose catalogue would be acquired by Salabert in 1946 following the publisher’s death as a result of his Resistance activities during World War II).

This particular Deiss project consisted of a set of eight piano pieces written to commemorate the Paris Exposition as well as to honor the famed French pianist and pedagogue Marguerite Long.  Eight piano pieces were commissioned and gathered together as a collection of “illustrations musicales” under the overarching title à l’Exposition.

Raymond Deiss music publisher

Raymond Deiss (1893-1943). During World War II the music publisher joined the Resistance, printing some 16 issues of the clandestine newspaper Pantagruel before being arrested and charged with sedition, leading to his execution in Cologne.

The compositions created for the Paris Exposition’s Festivals of Lights were large-scale orchestral works (some with chorus) — the longest of them running well over 30 minutes in duration.  By contrast, the piano pieces penned for the Deiss project — the eight composers personally selected by Mme. Long herself — are relative trifles; only one of the pieces lasts more than four minutes.  The collection includes:

  • Georges Auric:  La Seine, un matin …  (The Seine, One Morning …)
  • Marcel Delannoy:  Diner sur l’eau  (Dinner on the Water)
  • Jacques Ibert:  L’Espiègle du Village de Lilliput  (The Rapscallion of the Lilliputian Village)
  • Darius Milhaud:  Le Tour de l’Exposition  (Touring the Fair)
  • Francis Poulenc:  Bourrée au Pavillon d’Auvergne  (Bourrée at the Auvergne Pavilion)
  • Henri Sauguet:  Nuit coloniale sur les bords de la Seine  (French Colony Night on the Banks of the Seine)
  • Florent Schmitt:  La Retardée  (The Late One)
  • Germaine Tailleferre:  Au Pavillon d’Alsace  (At the Alsace Pavilion)
    Paris Exposition illustrations musicales Deiss 1937

    The table of contents page from the book of Paris Exposition piano pieces, published by Raymond Deiss (1937).

Henri Sauguet French composer

Henri Sauguet (1901-1989)

Writing about the set of pieces some 50 years after their creation, the composer Henri Sauguet remembered how the project had come about and how it was first presented to the public:

“The choice of composers was made by Mme. Marguerite Long, and it was her students — many of whom are now famous pianists — who gave the first performance of the pieces, one after the other, at a concert given at the time of the Exposition.”

No doubt in light of her central role in the project, the piano compositions in the set were dedicated to Marguerite Long — all of them except for Florent Schmitt’s, that is.  Schmitt’s piece was dedicated to the American-French pianist and pedagogue Aline van Barentzen instead.

Aline van Barentzen pianist

A poster promoting a concert featuring the American-French pianist Aline van Barentzen performing with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

One might wonder how this came about, and there are several clues as to the answer.  As it turns out, Schmitt’s original submission to the publisher was a far more substantial work than the pieces contributed by the seven other composers.  In fact, Schmitt’s entry was a five movement work of nearly 20 minutes in duration that ended up being published in 1939 as his Suite sans esprit de suite, Op. 89 in both piano and orchestral versions. 

Asked to supply an alternative composition that would be more in keeping with the scope of the other works in the collection, Schmitt delivered the short piece La Retardée, Op. 90, which already bore a dedication to Mme. van Barentzen.  The title of the piece — “The Late One” — may well refer to the last-minute changeout of music, rather than to any specific Paris Expo reference. An alternative explanation of the title has been posited by the American music critic Steven Kruger, who writes:  

“The title of the piece displays the insouciance of a good-looking woman who knows she is worth waiting for …”

Aline van Barentzen pianist

The pianist Aline van Barentzen (1900-1988), pictured in later life.

In retrospect, we can be happy that the publisher insisted on an alternative submission from Schmitt, because when weighing the musical merits of the eight compositions that make up the collection, Schmitt’s piece is noteworthy in its effectiveness and audience appeal.

The English music editor and critic Lionel Salter, for one, declared Schmitt’s La Retardée to be a “brilliant” composition and “perhaps the best piece” in the set. 

As for the other works in the collection, Salter characterized them as follows:

Lionel Salter

Lionel Salter (1914-2000)

“Milhaud offers a lolloping jaunt in his characteristically personal harmonic idiom.  Tailleferre has a tongue-in-cheek waltz, with some alien digressions.  Sauguet rambles past the Expo’s [French] colonial [possessions’] pavilions, picking up whiffs of their exoticism, while Poulenc contents himself with an Auvergnesque folk-dance …

Listening to all these miniatures one after the other is a bit like trying to dine off cocktail snacks, but taken individually there is much to enjoy …”

The à l’Exposition collection is not widely known either among pianists or the listening public, and to date the complete set has received just one commercial recording.  It is an interesting one in that it includes not only the set of eight piano pieces published by Deiss, but also a second set of piano works penned by nine other composers — a collection that was gathered together by a different Parisian publisher (Eschig) and introduced to the public the following year.

Exposition Paris 1937 Bennett Lerner Et Cetera

Only commercial recording so far, featuring pianist Bennett Lerner. (Etcetera label, 1988)

Alexandre Tcherepnin

Alexandre Tcherepnin (1899-1977)

The second project was spearheaded by the composer Alexandre Tcherepnin and once again involved Marguerite Long, who arranged for one of her star pupils — a then very-young Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer — to premiere the set in a recital at the Salle Gaveau in Paris in 1938. 

At the time Mlle. Henriot was just 14 years old, but she had already won the top prize for piano performance at the Paris Conservatoire — the first of numerous awards she would garner as her budding career as a concert pianist began to blossom.

Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer Charles Munch

From left to right, Vice-Admiral Jean-Jacques Schweitzer and his wife, pianist Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer, with conductors Charles Munch and Fritz Munch at the Lido cabaret in Paris. Henriot-Schweitzer (1925-2001) premiered the second (Tcherepnin-led) set of Paris Exposition piano pieces in 1938 at the age of 13. The famed Maestro Charles Munch was her uncle by marriage. (1957 photo)

The 1938 Eschig collection differs from the Deiss set in that the nine contributors hailed from countries other than France — although all of the composers were then working in Paris:

  • Ernesto Halffter (Spain)
  • Tibor Harsányi (Hungary)
  • Arthur Honegger (Switzerland)
  • Bohuslav Martinu (Czechoslovakia)
  • Marcel Mihalovici (Romania)
  • Federico Mompou (Spain)
  • Vittorio Rieti (Italy)
  • Alexandre Tansman (Russia)
  • Alexandre Tcherepnin (Russia)

Moreover, the inspiration for the compositions in this new collections was concentrated more specifically on the Expo’s funfair and circus installations, with the pieces sporting titles such as At the Roller-Coaster, The Whirly-Gig, The Train Ride, The Lion Lady, The Romanian Dancer and The Giant.

Bennett Lerner American pianist

Bennett Lerner (Photo: Christian Steiner)

The recording of both collections was released in 1988 by the Dutch/Belgian label Etcetera and featured the American pianist Bennett Lerner, who served up artistically sensitive performances that presented the music in the best possible light. 

While CD copies of the Etcetera recording aren’t easy to find these days, the individual pieces have been uploaded to YouTube as separate uploads and can be accessed there. 

Exposition Paris 1937 Track Listing Etcetera Lerner

The track listing for the 1988 Etcetera recording featuring pianist Bennett Lerner.

Owning the Etcetera recording and knowing the pieces that make up both sets, I heartily agree with Lionel Salter’s opinion that Florent Schmitt’s contribution is among the most brilliantly effective of the 17 works.  To judge for yourself, you can listen to La Retardée here on YouTube.

La Retardee Florent Schmitt

The first page to the sheet music for Florent Schmitt’s La Retardée, Op. 90.

It has now been 35 years since the first and only commercial recording of this music was made.  Surely, younger performers of today can find much to discover in these two collections — piano miniatures that are so very reflective of the musical styles that were in fashion in mid-1930s Europe …

JoAnn Falletta’s Buffalo Philharmonic recording of Florent Schmitt’s orchestral music wins the prestigious Diapason d’Or.

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The 2020 NAXOS recording, completed just days before the COVID pandemic shuttered classical music performances across the globe, includes two colorful ballet scores along with two world premieres.

Florent Schmitt Falletta Salome Oriane NAXOS

Since its November 2020 release during Florent Schmitt’s 150th birthday anniversary year, the NAXOS recording of four orchestral works by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under its music director, JoAnn Falletta, has garnered critical acclaim the world over. 

Moreover, the recording has been a commercial success, achieving the #2 sales position for NAXOS recordings in the months following its release.

NAXOS sales chart January 2020

NAXOS best-sellers, January 2021.

The latest accolade for the new Schmitt recording is winning the coveted Diapason d’Or for orchestral recordings in the March 2021 issue of Diapason magazine

Diapason Magazine logoConsidering the large number of orchestral releases that hit the streets each month, it is indeed a noteworthy honor — and all the more so considering that it represents a French magazine recognizing a recording of French music made by an American conductor and an American orchestra.  

No home-country advantage here!

In Diapason magazine’s review of the Florent Schmitt recording, writer and music critic François Laurent singled out Schmitt’s ballets La Tragédie de Salomé and Oriane et le Prince d’Amour, noting how effectively those colorful scores were brought to vibrant life by Maestra Falletta and the Buffalo musicians. 

Mezzo-soprano Susan Platts was also praised for her artistic approach to the solo passages in La Tragédie de Salomé and, most especially, the rapturous orchestral song Musique sur l’eau, set to poetry of Albert Samain.

Diapason Florent Schmitt JoAnn Falletta Recording Review March 2021

Diapason magazine’s review of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s NAXOS recording of four Florent Schmitt masterpieces, conducted by JoAnn Falletta (March 2021 issue).

For those who don’t read French, here is an English translation of François Laurent’s review:

Florent Schmitt remains, in the eyes of JoAnn Falletta, “the greatest French composer you’ve never heard of.” Hopefully this magnificent anthology will change the situation a bit. Continually deserting the Villa Medici for trips to Sweden or Morocco, Poland or Turkey, the ebullient 1900 Prix de Rome winner brought back a profusion of rhythms and colors, enshrined in his colossal scores.

La Tragédie de Salomé (1907), a ballet dedicated to his friend Stravinsky, would find its true dimensions three years later — those of a symphonic poem. Even as Schmitt cuts out three episodes to halve the performance time he also adds considerably to the orchestration. Whether it is for the amorous reveries entrusted to the English horn, the scintillations of the sea (harp and glockenspiel), or the thrills of the Danse des perles, the Buffalo forces deploy a rich palette, without ever overwhelming the erudite architecture or the juxtapositions of colors.  

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

This clarity of texture lends a fascinating depth to Les Enchantments sur la mer (with its gentle murmuring of harps, triangle, strings and winds that are apostrophic), and to the solitary song of the mezzo, rising at first in the distance (and with pianissimo strings), then coming closer joined by a female choir. The frenzy and intense expression are abundantly here too, whipped up by the lively gestures of the American conductor.

The 1918 Légende was intended (as was Debussy’s Rapsodie) for the saxophone of Elise Hall.  Despite Nikki Chooi’s incisive playing, the alternate version for violin of this tormented piece loses something of the contrast.

Susan Platts

Susan Platts

Let us finish with two rarities. With a tight vibrato and meticulous French, Susan Platts captivates in Musique sur l’eau (1898), a melody whose voluptuous chromaticism — the languor sliding between the sky and the waves — perfectly captures the symbolism of Samain’s poem. “Nothing is sweet like agony / From lip to lip / In undefined music.” 

Another enchantment is that of Oriane et le Prince d’Amour (1934-37), a ballet from which Falletta presents the concert suite all of apiece: knightly horns and fanfares, dissonant confessions juxtaposed against true love, exotic and menacing processions, and great virtuoso flights of winds leading to an exuberant conclusion. When will we have the complete ballet?

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Four months following its release, the Falletta/BPO recording of Florent Schmitt’s music continues to receive critical accolades from all quarters. The recording is readily available from all online classical music outlets — Amazon, Presto Music, ArkivMusic, HBDirect, etc. — in physical or download form.  In case you have yet to hear its stunning musical artistry, this recording is well-worth seeking out.

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