[TR24][OF] Ophélie Gaillard & Edna Stern - Chopin Œuvres pour piano et violoncelle - 2010 (Classique)

The cello was Frédéric Chopin’s other favourite instrument, the one he loved for its closeness to the human voice. He took an interest in opera from an early age, we remember, becoming what we would call today an opera buff, familiar with the voices of all the singers of his time; he flirted with the German soprano Henriette Sontag, fell in love with Constance Gladowska, for whom he composed some superb pieces... When Chopin composed for the cello, he heard the voice in its music.
Ophélie Gaillard has thus chosen to pay tribute to the poet of the piano through the voice of the cello.
And first of all, with the loveliest piece Chopin composed for her instrument: the famous Cello Sonata op. 65, written during the painful period in his life when he was about to separate from George Sand. He sketched the work at the end of 1845 and wrote it for the most part at Nohant during the last summer he spent there, in 1846. It was not finished when he returned to Paris in November. He completed it that winter and gave the first performance with his friend Auguste Franchomme at a private concert at his home on 17 February 1847, in the presence of a few close friends, including the painter Delacroix. Everyone was impressed by the intensity and depth of the work, and also by its modernity. Two years later, when he was dying, Chopin expressed his wish to hear this sonata: on 15 October Franchomme played the beginning, accompanied by Marcelina Czartoryska, a young princess, one of Chopin’s last pupils. But their playing was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing: Frédéric was exhausted. Soon afterwards he sank into a semi-coma and, at two o’ clock on the morning of 17 October, he died. Although the third-movement Largo is the bestknown part of this work, the Cello Sonata is fascinating from beginning to end, with a tightly woven first movement, impressive in its emotional expression, a Scherzo showing an almost heroic vivacity, and a Finale in rondo form that seems to relaunch the piece.
The other work for cello and piano that Ophélie Gaillard and Edna Stern have chosen for this recording is the Introduction and Polonaise brillante op. 3. Chopin wrote this piece in 1829, when he was only nineteen years old. He was staying at the time at Antonin, near Posen, on the estate of Prince Radziwill, whose charming seventeen-year-old daughter, Wanda, was a pianist. He composed the Polonaise brillante for Wanda to practice with her father, who played the cello. A few months later, in April 1830, Chopin added a slow introduction to the Polonaise brillante for a concert given by the pianist Kaczynsky. Although it is not a very profound work, it is nevertheless most entertaining, with its brilliance, colour and virtuosity, and its festive and youthful nature.
Finally, to complete this programme, Edna Stern and Ophélie Gaillard have chosen transcriptions for cello and piano of several pieces originally written for solo piano. And first of all the Preludes op. 28 nos. 2 and 4, composed on the island of Majorca during the first winter Chopin spent with George Sand, in conditions that were not as idyllic as they had hoped... The first of these two preludes, Lento in A minor, is a tense, painful and introverted meditation, while the second
one, Largo in E minor, which was played on the organ of La Madeleine in Paris for Chopin’s funeral, is a sad piece that seems to be drawn to silence. The Nocturne in E minor, written in 1827 by a seventeen-year-old Chopin still in Poland, is traversed by the confiding accents that are so characteristic of the Nocturne form in Chopin, with its warm expressiveness and a sort of discreet pathos that is so like him. The Waltz in A minor, dating from 1831, is melancholy and subdued, and full of the nostalgic yearning or spleen (zal in Polish, Sehnsucht in German) that Schumann must have had in mind when he described this piece as ‘a waltz more for the soul than for the body’.
Two fine specimens of Nocturne form, those of op. 37, punctuate this programme. Written in 1839, they are played, as originally intended, on the piano. The Nocturne in G major is a delightfully gentle, voluptuous piece with its barcarolle rhythm and a nonchalant, dreamy mood, while the Nocturne in G minor is meditative, bowed over a prayer-like episode in the middle.
In their choice of works for this programme Ophélie Gaillard and Edna Stern pay a very fine and original tribute to Chopin, keeping away from the well-worn paths, and with a simple desire to share emotion, and to express the intimate and intense feelings that inhabited the poet’s heart.