Avant l'orage: French String Trios, 1926–1939

Great music and magnificent musicians helped Paris hold its place as world capital of the arts during the turbulent decades between the two World Wars. The Pasquier brothers—violinist Jean, violist Pierre, and cellist Étienne—joined forces toward the end of the Roaring Twenties and soon inspired a flood of new works for string trio. Many of the pieces first performed or championed by the Trio Pasquier were by composers, some self-taught, others with careers outside the arts, who ignored the dominant trends of contemporary classical music. That might be why most fell into obscurity, although the years of Nazi occupation and post-war radicalism in France also played a part in burying them. Chance introduced the Chicago-based Black Oak Ensemble to the Pasquier repertory. They discovered a long-forgotten piece by Henri Tomasi while on tour in Corsica, and trawled libraries and archives in France and beyond to see if there were others like it. There were so many that they were able to fill this double album with French string trios from the years before the Second World War (hence its title, Avant l’orage, meaning “Before the storm”)—and they could have filled two more albums. “We found Tomasi’s String Trio in a Paris library, played it through, and realized it was a fantastic piece,” Black Oak cellist David Cunliffe tells Apple Music. “We went in search of other pieces and found these wonderful compositions that had been written mostly for the Pasquiers. It’s interesting that these trios were written in a brief period, just before the Second World War. Were their composers forewarning of events to come? Probably not. But I think you can hear something of that in them.” Cunliffe and his colleagues, violinist Desirée Ruhstrat and violist Aurélien Fort Pederzoli, played through what they discovered and chose to record seven of the best. Their album leads the listener into a land filled with chamber-music treasures and revelations. Read on to discover Cunliffe’s insights into what makes each piece tick. Trio à cordes en forme de divertissement (Henri Tomasi) “Tomasi is best-known to brass players today for his concertos for trumpet, trombone, and tuba. But he wrote some wonderfully lyrical chamber music between the two World Wars, perhaps none better than this string trio from 1938. It’s hard to believe that a work as fine as this has never been recorded before. He grabs you immediately with a fanfare-like theme, which seems to echo the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. We fell in love with this piece as we read through its four movements, especially the little intricacies of the ‘Nocturne’ but also the energetic ‘Scherzo’ and ‘Final,’ which is based on a theme similar to ‘Les olivettes,’ a popular Provençal folk tune. Tomasi was a good composer who deserves to be much better-known.” Trio for Violin, Viola & Cello (Jean Cras) “Although music was part of his upbringing, Jean Cras followed family tradition and joined the French navy. He rose to become a rear admiral and was decorated for his courage during the First World War. It’s remarkable that he found time to compose! But his music is of exceptional quality. In my mind, it's up there with Debussy. It’s inventive. It can be structurally complex but is always so well thought through. Every single note is important. Apart from taking a few lessons from Henri Duparc in Paris, Cras was self-taught as a composer. He carried a copy of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 132 on his almost constant travels and pays homage to it in his Trio for Violin, Viola & Cello’s ‘Lent.’ This sublime slow movement also contains evocations of Breton folk tunes from Cras’ home region, and the work ends with a wonderful Celtic jig.” Trio for Violin, Viola & Cello (Émile Goué) “Goué’s biography resonated with us after Silenced Voices, our debut album of music by Jewish composers who lost their lives to the Holocaust. A brilliant mathematician and physicist, he was captured by the Germans in 1940 and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war. His health was destroyed, and he died the year after he was repatriated. Goué composed this just before he was called up for military service. We all loved his music. It’s a little different from the other trios. The last movement, this kind of Quentin Tarantino piece, was particularly fun to play. And there’s some sumptuous chromatic harmonies in the ‘Adagio.’ It’s a bit lighter than the other works on the album, but I think Goué gets the balance completely right. Its sound is full—nothing is missing, nothing needs to be added.” Trio à cordes (Jean Françaix) “This is among the most famous of all 20th-century string trios. Schoenberg’s String Trio is highly acclaimed, but Françaix’s is the one that gets played most often. It’s extremely intricate and extremely fast. And the difficulty is in capturing all those little details. There are so many tiny nuances that are almost lost when you first hear the piece. You have to listen to it two or three times to hear what’s going on, partly because it goes so fast! Françaix knew the Pasquier brothers were up to the challenge, of course. We had a lot of fun, and pain, recording it. The piece goes off like a rocket with a relentless first movement and the following ‘Scherzo.’ But then comes a beautiful slow movement, like the slow movement of Debussy’s String Quartet, which grows from an exquisite heartfelt theme, and the wit of the final ‘Vivo.’ Wonderful!” Trio à cordes (Robert Casadesus) “It’s a wonderful thing for us, as musicians, to be musical archaeologists, digging up pieces that have long been buried. Robert Casadesus was famous worldwide as a pianist, but few people know that he also composed. He wrote many works on train journeys between gigs, and I think you can hear that sense of momentum in the first movement of the string trio he created for the Pasquiers and again in the little scherzando that comes in the middle of its second movement, ‘Légende.’ There’s also this mysterious, quite unsettling atmosphere about it. The final ‘Allegro aperto’ was a real test, as it’s extremely fast, often in unison and in the unfriendly key of B major. We practiced our scales like there was no tomorrow! It’s a string player’s nightmare but was enormously gratifying to play and record. This is the work’s premiere recording, and I’m so glad we rediscovered it.” Suite en trio for Violin, Viola & Cello (Gustave Samazeuilh) “It took a few lessons with our French violist, Aurélien, to learn how to pronounce Samazeuilh’s surname. I think even he wasn’t sure! But the consensus is that it’s ‘Sam-uh-zoy.’ He studied with Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, was close to Debussy, and became an influential music critic. This suite, which we’ve recorded for the first time, began life as a piano piece inspired by French Baroque dances. The version for strings differs from the original and sounds like it was always meant to be for trio. Its music is quite simple but often very expressive—for example, in the ‘Française’ and the seductive ‘Sarabande.’ The lovely ‘Musette,’ which is so cute, is beautifully written for the trio, while the final ‘Forlane’ is a joy to play.” 3 Pièces en trio (Gabriel Pierné) “This was one of the last of Pierné’s many compositions. He’s famous as the conductor who gave the premiere performances of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Debussy’s Images. But every summer, between concert seasons, he found time to compose. He wrote his 3 Pièces for the Pasquier brothers. Pierné gave each of them—Jean, Pierre, and Étienne—a theme that matches the number of letters in their names and gives them to their respective instruments in the first movement. It’s not a cheap trick—it works really well. The ‘Chanson’ second movement is a beautiful slow song without words. And in the final movement, ‘Les trois clercqs de Sainct-Nicholas,’ he evokes one of Balzac’s Droll Stories about three fat-cat priests (aka ‘The Three Clerks of Saint-Nicholas’) who are real con men. It’s a bawdy tale, and Pierné’s music reflects that brilliantly with its three tumbling individual voices.”