Debussy: Piano Trio in G major - download (MP3 & FLAC)

The Brodsky Quartet celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. Formed in 1972, the Quartet quickly emerged at the forefront of the international chamber music scene. It has performed more than 2000 concerts and made more than fifty highly acclaimed recordings. Now exclusive Chandos artists, the Brodsky players are releasing their second disc on Chandos with guest soloists Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and the harpist Sioned Williams.

The Trio for piano, violin, and cello is an early work, written before Debussy established his own very distinctive musical language heard in pieces such as La Mer. Another early piece, Rêverie, for piano, was written by the young, struggling composer at a time when he was trying to make a living in Paris. The easiest market to break into for a composer was the salon, where songs and not-too-taxing piano music were in demand. Rêverie was one of several charming and tuneful works that Debussy wrote for this scene.

In a somewhat different league, the String Quartet is considered a defining work in the history of chamber music. Sensual and impressionistic, it employs a cyclic structure that constituted a split from the rules of classical form and pointed the way forward. In the words of Pierre Boulez, Debussy freed chamber music from ‘rigid structure, frozen rhetoric, and rigid aesthetics’.

The Deux Danses, made up of the ‘Danse sacrée’ and ‘Danse profane’, complete the disc. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Parisian instrument makers Pleyel invented a ‘chromatic harp’ which dispensed with pedals and achieved the full chromatic compass from two rows of strings that slanted across one another. Debussy was approached to write two pieces intended for a final examination of the Pleyel model. ‘Danse sacrée’ makes use of Church modes, while ‘Danse profane’ is a kind of sarabande. The ‘competition’ aspect of the pieces is highlighted by the fact that, after the opening introduction, the harpist has no more than six bars’ rest. As it happened, the Pleyel model never caught on, and the works are now always performed on a pedal harp.

The Danel Quartet has marked these past few years with two complete cycles of reference: Shostakovich and Weinberg. But the genes are French, and Debussy is the mother tongue. Paying homage to the composer of Pelléas in 2012 was all the more natural in that the quartet is based in Brussels, a city that played an important role in the composer's development.

The Quartet, dedicated to the Ysaÿe Quartet, was played there in the winter of 1894; and the Danses were commissioned by the Brussels Royal Conservatory for its chromatic harp class, a magical instrument of which Francette Bartholomée is the attentive guardian. As for the Trio, a youthful score long ignored, its resurrection owes something to Daniel Blumenthal. So it is into their garden that the performers invite us to savour a refined repast.

The trios composed by Chausson and Debussy were composed in consecutive years – 1880/1881 showcasing the development of this form during the French Romantic period. Each of the four brief character pieces by Widor reflects an individual emotional sound-scape.