Leila Megane (contralto)
The English Ensemble:
Marjorie Hayward (vk lin) ; Rebecca Clarke (viola); May Mukle (violoncello); William Murdoch (pianoforte)
One of the greatest tragedies in the history of French music was the death of Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) through a bicycle accident at his home at Limay, Seine-et-Oise. Like many other musicians, he began his career as a lawyer, but at the age of twenty-five he gave up law for music. His first move was to enter Massenet's composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, and he also studied with Cesar Franck for three years. From Massenet he learnt to write with the utmost purity of texture and from Cesar Franck he derived his richness of harmonic colour and deep romantic feeling.
The Piano Quartet in A was written in 1897, two years before the composer died. It ' was to mark the culminating point of his work ', says Vincent d'Indy, ' and here it is evident that he had made an immense stride forward, quite as much in the merit and charm of the ideas as in the novelty of the form, in which cyclic constituents, rhythmically modified, end by acquiring a double nature, which enriches and greatly strengthens the architecture of the work '.