63. Admiration and Rivalry
from The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Hosted by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Debussy: Sonata for cello and piano Ravel: Trio Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are held today as two icons of French classical music. Both were prominent in fin-de-siecle Parisian culture, associating closely with writers, poets, and painters. Both attended the 1889 Paris Exhibition and were fascinated by the musical cultures they encountered there, particularly the Javanese gamelan. Working in almost parallel fashion, both actively sought to create a fluid new sound world, rich in texture and color, and each emerged with a distinctive musical idiom. The two pieces we’ll hear today were written within a year of one another, in the midst of World War I. Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano was composed in 1915, three years before his death. Within its irregular phrasing and rubato, every gesture in the cello conjures a speaking voice, urgently trying to communicate. Ravel’s 1914 Trio is especially notable for its narrative quality, as if a story or panorama were slowly unfolding as the three instruments weave in and out of each other, layering and disassembling strata of sound.
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