Jeanne-Louise Farrenc (1804-75)
Trio in E minor, for Flute, Cello, and Piano, op. 45 (1862)
Like Amy Beach a few generations later, Jeanne-Louise Farrenc was one of the most accomplished and celebrated female piano virtuosos and composers of her era. Indeed, for nearly half of her life, Farrenc served as Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory: she was the only woman to hold such a prestigious position at that or any comparably renowned music school in the whole of the 19th century.
As a composer, Farrenc was prolific, writing in many genres, from symphonies to solo piano miniatures. Her most significant output, though, was probably her chamber music. Between 1839 and 1862, she completed a series of sonatas, trios, quintets, a sextet, and a nonet for a variety of instrumental combinations. The E-minor Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano – an ensemble with few precedents then or since – was the last of them.
Its inaugural movement begins with a short series of assertive chords before launching into the minor-key first theme, played in octaves by the flute and cello. Much of this opening part is homophonic – the cello doubles the piano’s bass line while the keyboard’s right-hand line accompanies the flute playing in its upper register – but, eventually, contrapuntal textures emerge. The latter continue over the second theme, which, like the first, is largely triadic and scalar, not to mention sweepingly lyrical.
Songfulness abounds in the lovely second movement, with its surprising harmonic twists and darkly martial central section. And the third-movement Scherzo’s middle part and coda provide moments for audience and musicians alike to catch their breath between the quicksilver, Mendelssohnian quarters with which they alternate.
The motoric finale recalls (to a point) some of the vigorous solo passages in Bach’s B-minor Orchestral Suite. But Farrenc’s writing is, as a general rule, brighter in tone and lighter in texture, and the Trio ends in a virtuosic blast of E major.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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