Praise for Chloë Hanslip's confident excursion into unfamiliar territory

-- Gramophone [4/2008]

-----

Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, the son of a businessman, was born in Paris on 18th August, 1849. A child prodigy on the violin, Godard studied with Richard Hammer and later Henri Vieuxtemps. At the age of fourteen (some sources say when he was ten) Godard was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire and studied composition under Henri Reber. His first published work was a violin sonata written when he was sixteen. In the mid-1860s he twice competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome. From this time forward Godard dedicated himself to composition, first writing chamber music (he played viola in several chamber music societies), and numerous piano pieces. He was especially inspired by the music of Robert Schumann, and orchestrated Schumann’s Kinderscenen in 1876. In 1878 his Le Tasse was a joint winner of the prize for musical composition given by the city of Paris. Le Tasse is a three-part dramatic symphony with soli and chorus based on a poem of Charles Grandmougins, which was in turn based on The Damnation of Faust. In succeeding years Godard composed an enormous amount of music, including three programme symphonies (Symphonie Gothique, Symphonie Orientale, and Symphonie Légendaire), three string quartets, four violin sonatas, a cello sonata, two piano trios, numerous piano pieces, violin and piano concertos, various orchestral works, and over a hundred songs. Godard is chiefly remembered for his operas. His first opera, Les bijoux de Jeanette, was produced in 1878; Pedro de Zalamea followed in 1884. His next opera, Jocelyn, based on a poem of Lamartine, appeared in 1888. Its fame rests mainly on the well-known Berceuse, which has been arranged for numerous combinations of instruments and/or voices and remains Godard’s most familiar work. It has been performed by Jussi Björling, John McCormack (in English translation as “Angels Guard Thee” and with the violin accompaniment of Fritz Kreisler), Alma Gluck, Pablo Casals, the Eroica Trio, and many others. Godard’s operatic output also included Dante et Béatrice (1890), Jeanne d’Arc (1891), and La Vivandière (1895; unfinished at his death and completed by Paul Vidal). The conductor Jules Étienne Pasdeloup admired Godard’s music and allowed Godard to conduct many of his own premières. After Pasdeloup’s retirement, Godard created theConcerts Modernes in an attempt to continue Pasdeloup’s Concerts Populaires , but this lasted only one season (October 1885 – April 1886). In 1887 he was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1889 was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. Godard died of tuberculosis at Cannes on 10th January, 1895.

Godard’s was unquestionably a romantic temperament, though more closely aligned with the romanticism of the mid-nineteenth century than with Wagner and Tchaikovsky; his talent has been compared with the facility and manner of Saint-Saëns. His respect and admiration for Robert Schumann has already been noted, as has his tutelage under Henri Vieuxtemps, one of the great romantic violinist-composers of the nineteenth century. Godard’s music has sometimes been criticized for superficiality and “over-hastiness”, and truly he composed at a prodigious pace, reaching Opus 100 in 1886 while still in his thirties. In romantic fashion his symphonies are “named”, and his operas contain the soaring melody and romantic sensibility expected of romantic opera, though his stage works quickly fell out of favour. Among his operas, the unfinished opéra comique La Vivandière had the greatest success. Godard’s music follows the traditions of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and he had little sympathy for the overblown rhetoric of Wagner, especially since, being of Jewish extraction, he disliked Wagner’s anti- Semitism. Like the early romantics Godard excelled in small forms. The nineteenth-century scholar Hervey wrote that “Godard is perhaps greater in small things than he is in large. There is an exquisite charm in some of his songs … whilst many of his piano pieces have a savour all their own.” A new appreciation for Godard’s achievement in small pieces, once dismissed as salon music, has grown in recent years. Godard’s achievement is best summed up as “traditional romantic”.

While focusing much of his compositional career on other forms and instruments such as opera, songs, and piano pieces, Godard did not neglect the instrument on which he had excelled as a youth. His violin concertos are among his very best works and display both inventiveness and élan. The Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 131, is in the traditional three movements. The opening Allegro moderato features alternating chords by soloist and orchestra from the first measure; this gesture is fleshed out with scale runs by the soloist and snatches of a motif consisting of a half note and triplets. The main lyric theme enters after a ritardando; this is worked to a climax and repeated forte. After a brief orchestral statement, the soloist launches into a cadenza featuring double, triple, and quadruple stops as well as a glissando run. The thematic materials are reworked and the movement ends with the usual flourish. The following Adagio quasi andante features a steady triplet orchestral accompaniment underneath the main lyric melody, at first alluded to by solo horn, and then taken up fully by solo violinist. The contrasting midsection, in 6/8 time rather than the 4/4 of the movement’s beginning, contains double-stopping and short runs, then slowly returns to the 4/4 main lyric material and the steady triplet accompaniment, which accompaniment is finally discarded in the coda. The final Allegro non troppo is a bouncy movement in 2/4 time, a delightful rondo romp from beginning to end.

The Concerto Romantique, Op. 35, is a much earlier work and in some ways more experimental. Hervey wrote that in the Concerto Romantique Godard’s talent found “its true expression. The composer of these works is in the full force of his powers, and it is not too much to state the belief that he has yet much to say”. Unfortunately Hervey’s book was published in 1894, just months before Godard’s untimely death. The first unorthodox feature of this concerto is that it has four movements instead of the usual three. The first movement, marked Allegro moderato, while of a more dramatic character than the other movements, is relatively brief for an opening movement, which tend to be the “heaviest” and longest movement. After a sixteen-measure orchestral introduction, the soloist enters fortissimo with a highly accented martial theme in double stops. After an orchestral interlude, the violin sings a lyric theme; these materials eventually lead to a section marked Recitativo, which is in the nature of an accompanied cadenza. A coda brings the movement to a close. The graceful Adagio non troppo is connected to the following Canzonetta, marked Allegro moderato, by a short improvisatory section. This is Godard’s most famous concerto movement, and until the mid-twentieth-century was often published by itself or in collections in violin and piano arrangement. It is a delicate and highly accented song, only briefly discarding its gossamer character for more sustained lyricism. The final Allegro molto opens with a dramatic statement in the orchestra; the soloist enters with a theme marked Agitato ed appassionato molto. This theme is interspersed with passage-work, some of scherzo-like character. The soloist’s final peroration features double-stops and the movement ends with appropriate high spirits.

The atmospheric Scènes Poétiques for Orchestra, Op. 46, contains four short bucolic pieces depicting various outdoor scenes: Dans les bois (In the woods), Dans les champs (In the fields), Sur la montagne (On the mountain), and the bustling Au village (In the village).

Bruce R. Schueneman

GODARD Piano Trios: in g, op. 32; in F, op. 72. Jocelyn: Berceuse • Parnassus Tr • MDG GOLD 3031615 (59:47)


Listening to these two piano trios by Benjamin Godard (1849–95), one would never guess that he trained as a violinist under Henri Vieuxtemps at the Paris Conservatory. I say this because both works are launched by a storm of piano passagework so turbulent as to leave Mendelssohn hanging on for dear life at the dock. From this one might understandably surmise that Godard was one of the great keyboard virtuosos of the 19th century, though such was not the case. This is music that is strangely beautiful and beautifully strange, which makes it difficult to describe, so perhaps some background will help.


The Jewish Godard was born in Paris at a time when opera was all the rage and when piano and violin giants—Alkan, Chopin, Liszt, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, etc.—filled Parisian salons and concert halls to overflowing. Godard, like his slightly earlier French Jewish compatriots Meyerbeer and Halévy, sought fame and fortune in the opera house, writing at least eight operas, only one of which, Jocelyn , seems to have had any staying power. Unlike Meyerbeer and Halévy, however, Godard did not place all or most of his eggs in one basket. He was highly prolific in a number of genres, composing a surprisingly large number of works considering his relatively short life of 46 years. Among his output are concertos for violin and piano—a Naxos recording of the violin concertos with Chloë Hanslip was reviewed by Ian Lace in Fanfare 31:6—ballets, overtures, three symphonies, three string quartets, sonatas for violin and cello, the two piano trios on this disc, plus numerous songs and solo piano pieces. Yet out of more than 150 works, Godard is today remembered mainly for the Berceuse from his opera Jocelyn , added as an encore at the end of the current CD. It might also be mentioned that Godard was openly hostile to Wagner and outspokenly critical of the German composer’s anti-Semitism.


It’s too easy, perhaps intellectually lazy even, to cite Mendelssohn and Schumann as the only influences in Godard’s music and to just leave it at that, for there’s much more going on here. Take, for example, the rolling, roiling turbulence that opens the 1884 Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major. Franck’s A-Major Violin Sonata was still two years in the offing, but it’s uncanny how closely Godard’s writing presages the beginning of the second movement in Franck’s sonata. There is also a degree and a type of chromaticism in this score that would not have occurred to Mendelssohn or Schumann and that is more common to the French school; I’m thinking particularly of Fauré, who, after all, was born five years before Godard.


Like most works of its genre and period, a second theme, quieter and more lyrical in nature, is introduced. But here is where I believe Godard is at his weakest. The desire and the impulse are there, the gesture sincere, but the ability to craft a memorable melody eludes him, and what emerges in its place is a kind of soft-shoe, salon-style music that bides its time until the next storm surge washes away the cucumber and cress sandwiches. Listen, for example, beginning at 4:20 in the first movement, and then to the violin’s entrance 10 seconds later.


The Piano Trio No.1 in G Minor dates from 1880 and was, at one time, quite popular. Again, the piece opens in a state of tumult, with restless, agitated passagework in the piano. Here, the Mendelssohn influence is a bit more pronounced. Listen, for example, beginning at 1:54 in the first movement, to the second theme that unfolds like a Mendelssohnian song without words. The Leipzig composer is also conjured up in Godard’s Tempo di Menuetto, which is actually a moderately paced scherzo. But these good-natured elves sound more like oafs, hiccupping and clumsily tripping over each other as if they’ve had a bit too much to drink.


I might question the Parnassus Trio’s violinist, Yamel Yu, and cellist, Michael Gross, for overdoing it a bit on the portamentos in the Andante quasi Adagio and elsewhere. The potted plant is leafy enough; fertilizer is not needed. As note author Martin Bernklau observes, “The way Godard’s lyrical talent sometimes borders on sentimentality in the slow movements probably engendered a favorable response in the salons.”


The concluding Allegro vivace provides further evidence of French influences in Godard’s music that tend to dilute the prima facie Mendelssohn/Schumann argument, for here we have a clear example of the cyclic techniques favored by Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, and Liszt. The trio’s last movement begins with the same material that began the first movement. Godard then transforms it harmonically and rhythmically in true cyclic fashion.


As salon pieces go, the Berceuse from Jocelyn , in Bernklau’s words, “is certainly not kitsch despite its popularity. It is a little gem whose tender melodic beauty has survived more than a century.”


Most record labels are proud to trumpet first-ever recordings. That MDG doesn’t do so in this case suggests to me that previous recordings of Godard’s piano trios may have once existed. Currently, however, I find no other listings. As hinted at above, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the Parnassus Trio’s somewhat raffish readings; I could imagine this music being played more tastefully and with greater refinement by a French ensemble that better understood the musical aesthetic of Godard’s time and place. But we’re not likely to get another recording of these works anytime soon, and technically, the Parnassus Trio is an exceptionally fine ensemble whose many excellent performances on MDG—trios by Lalo, Philipp Scharwenka, and Rheinberger—I’ve been enjoying for a number of years. Recording, as always with this label, is outstanding. In the absence of perhaps more idiomatic readings, this is definitely recommended, especially to those who enjoy exploring the nooks and crannies of 19th-century chamber music.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins


Although Benjamin Godard's prolific output is represented today primarily by the Berceuse from his opera Jocelyn, his two piano trios are anything but salon fluff. Each four-movement work fully taps the medium's textural potential, with plenty of melodic interest, well-sustained development, and witty touches, such as the deft alterations from triple to duple time in the G minor Trio Minuetto and the hushed exchanges between the piano's broken chords and the pizzicato strings in the F major Trio's Allegro vivace finale (letter L in my copy of the Durand score).

The Trio Parnassus pretty much matches the high standards it set in its excellent Schumann recordings for MDG. The musicians are especially responsive to the Adagio movements' long, unfolding narratives, and generally take Godard's explicit dynamic directives on faith. Ideally I'd prefer faster, more effervescent and sharply characterized finales than what the Trio Parnassus delivers, but the ensemble still makes a strong case for reviving these works. In the absence of an earlier, out-of-print edition on Koch Schwann featuring the Trio Ma Non Troppo, the Trio Parnassus has no current catalog competition here. Recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com