It’s music to get Camille Saint-Saëns’ blood boiling, on the next “Music from Marlboro.”
Saint-Saëns was the dedicatee of the Piano Quintet in F minor by his friend, César Franck. But as he sight-read through the piano part at the work’s premiere in 1879, he became more and more agitated, angry even. At the conclusion of the piece, he rejected Franck’s attempt to shake his hand, and stormed off without acknowledging the applause.
He wasn’t the only one. Franck’s wife also made no secret of hating it.
Here was music of sublimated desire, and everyone knew the cause. Saint-Saëns knew, because he felt the same way about Franck’s pupil, Augusta Holmès. Franck tutored Holmès in organ and composition. No doubt he admired her musical talent, but equally there was no doubt his interest went beyond that of master-disciple. Don’t let those mutton chops fool you. A man is only flesh and blood.
There must have been something about Holmès, the French composer of Irish descent, because she had the same effect on just about every man she crossed paths with. Saint-Saëns had proposed marriage to her multiple times, always without success. He would refer to her as a “beautiful pythoness.” Methinks his vines had tender sour grapes.
We’ll hear a performance of Franck’s incendiary piece, featuring pianist Mitsuko Uchida, violinists Soovin Kim and David McCarroll, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Matthew Zalkind, from the 2012 Marlboro Music Festival.
The hour will open with a work by Claude Debussy. Debussy composed “En blanc et noir” in 1915, making it one of his later creations, contemporaneous with the Cello Sonata, the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, and the Etudes for solo piano.
It is to be remembered that Saint-Saëns, who basically lived forever, was 80 years-old by this time. He loathed the work. “We must at all costs bar the door of the Institute against a man capable of such atrocities,” he fumed. “They should be put next to the cubist pictures.”
The first movement, an energetic waltz, is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky; the second, a somber slow movement, to Debussy’s friend, Jacques Charlot, who was killed during the First World War; and the third, a playful scherzando, to Igor Stravinsky.
We’ll hear it played at Marlboro in 2017 by pianists Xiaohui Yang and Cynthia Raim.
The forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest, thanks to Saint-Saëns’ anger management issues, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
BONUS: Tune in early to hear one of Holmès’ symphonic poems in the 5:00 hour!
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
PHOTOS (clockwise from left): Saint-Saëns, all dressed up with nowhere to go; Franck at the organ; Holmès with her je ne sais crois; Debussy, transfixed by a cigarette
