Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmants masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth et dansant, et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques!

 
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune.
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur,
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

 
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver, les oiseaux dans les arbres,
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

“Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!”
 

“Harmonie du soir”

       (Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal)

“Sounds and scents swirl in the evening air / melancholy waltzes and languorous dizziness!”: nothing less than verses by Charles Baudelaire can introduce us to the poetry and the extraordinary evocative power of the music by Ravel and Debussy to be offered by the Trio di Parma this evening who are in their element in the magical setting of the Castle’s Courtyard of Honour.

Trio di Parma was founded in 1990 in “Arrigo Boito” National Conservatory, where his members graduated with top marks plus distinction and honor mention. After that, Trio perfected himself at Accademia Chigiana” in Siena, and at the Fiesole Music School.

Trio di Parma gained his most prestigious awards at International Concourses in Florence (Vittorio Gui), Melbourne, and Munich (ARD). Moreover, National Critics Association esteemed Trio di Parma as the best chamber music ensemble in 1994, assigning the “Premio Abbiati”. Trio Di Parma has been invited by the most prominent musical associations in Italy and abroad (Accademia di S.Cecilia in Rome, Società del Quartetto di Milano, Amici della Musica di Firenze, Unione Musicale di Torino, Gran Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Berliner Philarmoniker, Wigmore Hall in Lonon, Wien Konzerthaus, Hamburg Musikhalle, New York Lincoln Center, Teatro Coliseo at Buenos Aires...), performing even in Dublin, Dresden, Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, Washington, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago del Chile, Adelaide...

Trio di Parma constantly cooperates with prominent musicians as Vladimir Delman, Carl Melles, Pavel Vernikov, Bruno Giuranna, Cecilia Gasdia...

Numerous are also TV and Radio performances given in Europe and overseas, like Italian RadioTelevision (RAI), Bayerischer Rundfunk, NDR, WDR, MDR, Radio Bremen, ORT, ABC-Classic Australia. They also recorded Brahms Trios for UNICEF and all the Beethoven Trios for the prestigious Amadeus Music Magazine. Trio di Parma is also engaged as far as teaching, precisely at “Scuola Superiore Internazionale di Musica da Camera di Duino” and at “Accademia Musicale del Teatro Cinghio di Parma”.

Ivan Rabaglia, violin - Enrico Bronzi, cello

Alberto Miodini, piano

PROGRAMME NOTE by Alberto Miodini

The piece placed at the beginning of the concert in the guise of a prologue, Debussy’s Clair de lune, is taken from the Suite Bergamasque for solo piano, written between 1890 and 1905. Like impressionist painting Debussy’s music is often inspired en plein air, not in a descriptive sense but, as Debussy himself said, “a sympathetic transposition of what is invisible in nature”. “Music” he wrote “is a mysterious mathematical form whose elements derive from infinity. Music is the expression of water in motion, playful curves designed by the wind changing direction. There is nothing more musical than a sunset”.

The composition of the Sonata for violin and piano, Ravel’s final chamber piece, is the fruit of five years work, from 1922 to 1927. It was performed for the first time by the violinist Georges Enesco and Ravel himself on 30 May 1927 at the Erard Hall in Paris. A masterpiece of the finest construction, the sonata is characterised by a transparency in the writing typical of Ravel’s final works, which achieves the fusion of the two instruments, almost to an absurd degree, making the most of their individual peculiarities and often keeping them on two, cleanly distinct planes, as for example in the first movement, the most elaborate and developed of the three. The second movement is a nostalgic stylisation of the blues, while the concluding perpetual motion is a virtuoso whirlwind reminiscent of the end of the Quartet of 1902.

“The love of a challenge” made Ravel start to write a Sonata for Violin and Cello in April 1920, a few years after composing a short Duo for the same combination of instruments as part of the vast Tombeau de Claude Debussy along with contributions by Stravinsky, Dukas, Malipiero, Bartòk and Satie. The Sonata, significantly dedicated to Debussy, kept him occupied until February 1922 and for a long time it wasn’t properly understood, even starting with the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange who was its first interpreter and who asked why “Ravel makes the cello play a flute part and the violin play that of a drum”. The critics of the time were also unaware of the poetry of this masterpiece which is concealed behind dissonance and diabolical virtuosity, icy clarity, unaccustomed registers, crude harmonics and the frequent use of polytonality.

At the outbreak of the First World War Ravel, unfit for military service on health grounds, he enlists as a volunteer. He is composing a Trio for piano, violin and cello and hoping to finish it before going to the Front, ensuring that what might be his last work is complete. Finished in August 1914 the Trio is characterised by its vivacious musical construction, almost turning that esprit de gèometrie, so patiently pursued by the composer, into sound, yet without ignoring the values of melodic invention and variety in the harmonic language. In the Trio he reveals a creative freedom which points to the sophistication of the instrumental writing and to the inexhaustible playing with the timbres. The first movement, based on a rhythmic combination of Basque origin, is followed by one which could be called a Scherzo entitled “Pantoum”. This refers to a Malayan verse form used, among others, by Victor Hugo for Les orientales and by Baudelaire in Harmonie du soir. In the third movement, Ravel revives the old form of the pasacalle: the main theme, entrusted to the low register of the piano, is followed by a series of nine variations. The Finale concludes the work with festive colours spinning round in which the strings, with trills and brilliant ornaments  provide the background for the wit of the piano.

Translation by Sarah J Hyde - www.thelanguage.biz

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