Born in Lyons in 1697, Leclair seems to have been genetically programmed for a performing career: Five of his seven siblings were violinists. After publishing his first few violin sonatas in Paris, he distinguished himself as a member of the ducal court orchestra in Turin. (In fact, it was an appointment as ballet master at the Teatro Regio that initially brought him to the northern Italian city.) Thereafter he pursued a peripatetic career, moving from Italy to France to Holland and back again to France, where he ended his life in the service of the Duke of Gramont. Notoriously temperamental—he gave up a position at the court of Louis XV rather than share the directorship of the royal orchestra—Leclair was murdered on his own doorstep in Paris in 1764, apparently by his violinist nephew. An appreciation published a few years later nonetheless described him as “an earnest, reflective spirit” who “had none of the feigned modesty that seems only to crave praise, nor the presumptuous vanity that gives rise to resentment.”
Although he is best known for his instrumental sonatas, Leclair composed in a variety of genres, including chamber music, concertos, ballets, and opera. The E-Minor Sonata is one of a half-dozen Sonates à deux violons sans basse (Sonatas for Two Violins without Bass) published in Paris in 1730. The 33-year-old Leclair was at the height of his fame as a composer and violin virtuoso, having made his debut two years earlier at the Concert Spirituel, the city’s leading concert series. Known as the “French Corelli,” he was a follower of the Italian virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli; it’s no coincidence that Leclair’s teacher in Turin, Giovanni Battista Somis, was a Corelli pupil. The Op. 3 Sonatas are essentially trio sonatas, even though they dispense with the conventional harmonic bass supporting the two melody instruments.
The Sonata in E Minor is cast in three movements, instead of the four-movement structure (slow-fast-slow-fast) of the prototypical Corellian sonata. The violin writing, while vigorous and moderately virtuosic, is far from showy (Leclair was said to abhor “tumultuous applause”) and affords both players equal opportunity to shine. The opening Allegro ma poco is enlivened by sprightly triplets, ornamental trills, and brisk, imitative repartee. The second-movement gavotte, with its relaxed, measured gait and athletic leaps, seemingly recalls Leclair’s early career as a professional dancer. In the final Presto, the two violinists volley racing torrents of 16th notes in triple time, now echoing each other, now synchronizing their voices in tandem.
On June 3, 1786—one month after the triumphant premiere in Vienna of The Marriage of Figaro—Mozart put the finishing touches on the second of his two great quartets for piano and strings. Its predecessor, in the characteristically “tragic” key of G minor, had been criticized by the publisher as excessively difficult to play, and hence to sell to the music-buying public. Franz Anton Hoffmeister reportedly advised the composer to “write in a more popular vein, otherwise I won’t be able to publish and pay for any more of your works.” Mozart responded to this ultimatum by wiggling out of his contract (he had originally agreed to supply several piano quartets for the burgeoning amateur market) and placing the E-flat–Major Quartet in more appreciative hands.
The piano quartet was a new genre—one that Mozart virtually invented—and he was understandably keen to explore its potential free from commercial constraints. In any case, he was fully capable of composing “in a more popular vein.” K. 493 quickly became all the rage in Europe’s fashionable salons, even if it was often played with more gusto than finesse. One critic complained that the quartet was “impossible to listen to when it falls into mediocre amateur hands and is poorly played. This happened innumerable times last winter ... What a difference when this oft-mentioned work is performed with the greatest accuracy by four skilled musicians who have studied it carefully, in a quiet room where the suspension of every note cannot escape the listening ear, and in the presence of only two or three attentive persons!”
Despite its sunnier disposition, K. 493 makes no more concession to amateur-grade technique than the G-Minor Quartet. The two outer movements sport long stretches of bracing duple-time passagework designed to show off both the pianist’s accuracy and agility. (That pianist was, of course, Mozart himself.) Much of the keyboard writing is mercilessly exposed, the lack of harmonic “filler” giving the music an extra measure of transparency. The middle movement—a tenderly lyrical, triple-time Larghetto in A-flat major—provides a subtle contrast of both meter and mood. The deeply satisfying unity of the E-flat–Major Quartet expresses itself at every level of the composition, down to such niceties as the recurring interval of a descending sixth (listen for it at the very beginning, when it is introduced by the piano and violin in the first movement’s beguiling countersubject) and the chromatic inflections and decorative turns that impart color and bounce to the melodic line.
Chausson is chiefly remembered today for a single work—his rhapsodic and achingly beautiful Poème for Violin and Orchestra, written for great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and partly inspired by Ysaÿe’s own richly expressive Poème élégiaque. In his all-too-short lifetime, however, Chausson was regarded as a leading light of the French Romantic school, destined to follow in the footsteps of his teachers, Franck and Massenet. As a young man, Chausson fell under the spell of Wagner and spent his honeymoon at Bayreuth; his opera Le roi Arthus translates the medieval Arthurian romances into a more modern Wagnerian sound world. Later, prodded by Debussy (his on-and-off friend and protégé), Chausson did an about-face and adopted the more concise style exemplified by the serenely classical Piano Quartet and his miniature lyrical drama Chanson perpétuelle, the last work he completed before his death in a bicycle accident in 1899.
During the nine years he labored over Le roi Arthus, from 1886 to 1895, Chausson broke away to write a number of shorter works, including the misleadingly titled Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet. Although the French title translates to “concerto,” Chausson seems to have meant it in the 18th-century sense of a “concerted” work for instrumental ensemble. (Like Debussy, Chausson believed that modern French composers had much to learn from the supposedly pure and refined style of Rameau, Couperin, and other Baroque masters.) In this case, Chausson treats the violin and piano more or less as equal soloists, relegating the string quartet to the background. Upon finishing the Concert in 1891, the chronically pessimistic composer pronounced it a “dismal failure.” Happily, he sang a different tune after Ysaÿe, pianist Auguste Pierre, and members of the Ysaÿe Quartet premiered the work in Brussels a year later. “Never have I had such great success,” Chausson exulted. “I feel giddy and joyful, such as I have not managed to feel for a long time.”
Whether or not Chausson’s work qualifies as a concerto, the writing for the solo violin and piano is decidedly virtuosic. (Like the Poème, the Concert exploits the purity of tone, liquid phrasing, and tasteful reticence associated with its dedicatee, Ysaÿe.) Moreover, the textures produced by the full ensemble are often symphonic, although Chausson varies the mix with extended passages for two, three, or four players that sound more like chamber music. Despite the Concert’s length—performances clock in at around 42 minutes—the musical argument feels highly concentrated. Much of the first movement derives from the portentous three-note motto (D-A-E) that the pianist pummels out in the opening bars. The Sicilienne takes its name from the Baroque dance known as the siciliana; its tenderly lyrical theme in swaying 6/8 meter toggles between minor and major tonalities, as does the propulsive, rhythmically animated Finale. In between comes a tragic slow movement in F minor, whose meandering chromatic lines ultimately converge on a hushed F-major chord that characterizes the intense fragility of Chausson’s creation.
—Harry Haskell