Chausson Quartet Concerto

Here's a deluxe package if ever there were one! Itzhak Perlman and Jorge Bolet join the Juilliard Quartet in a smashing performance of one of the most unusual works in all of music. Chausson's Concert (not "Concerto," please note) really is, in effect, a violin concerto in which the accompaniment is not the full orchestra but a piano quintet. Add to that the fully symphonic form of the piece, and the result is a unique musical creation that remains one of the chamber-music repertoire's best-kept secrets. Listen to this recording, and you'll be amazed that the music's not better known.

After the death of the stupendously talented Hector Berlioz in 1869, there remained only one Frenchman to challenge the somewhat frivolous national taste. A Belgian-born Parisian, Cesar Franck became the Pied Piper for serious-minded composers who sought to ennoble French music; of his followers Chausson was as ardent as any.

It is easy to understand why Chausson’s Concert is not as regular a feature of concert programmes as, say, Franck’s Violin Sonata. After all, a work for piano, violin and string quartet must surely have an instrumental imbalance. How can Chausson occupy all three violin parts for nearly forty minutes? In short, he does not. Nor does he try. Much of the Concert is essentially a sonata for violin and piano with an accompanying, though essential, string quartet. Chausson’s refusal to involve the quartet at every juncture merely to justify the players’ fees results in a signally well-balanced late Romantic work. When the quartet does feature on an equal footing, the effect is all the more telling. The fingerprints of Franck can be detected readily throughout the Concert, but in this and the Piano Quartet, Chausson’s individuality overcomes his teacher’s influence. Indeed, there are premonitions of Debussy, Ravel and even Shostakovich. Tangibly the product of live performances, these accounts traverse the gamut of emotions, bristling with energy, lyricism and conviction, and ensuring that this disc will never gather much dust.

Eugène Ysaÿe, a violin virtuoso admired by all his contemporaries, was an inheritor of what has justly been considered as the Belgian school of violin, whose ascendancy can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century. His work as a composer, however, is much less well known today and it is this facet of his extraordinarily active life that we will explore here. He composed many different types of works; here we present his works for solo violin and orchestra, including two movements of violin concertos which are now available on record for the first time, and his chamber music.

This is one of the greatest chamber CDs, bringing together Chausson's timeless Concert with his elusive String Quartet in the most beautiful, idiomatic performances imaginable. Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard have never been bettered as a duo, but they particularly are in their element in this music, given its full expression by their passion and strength, which combines with a sense of style that is as natural as speech.