– Composer: Amédée-Ernest Chausson (20 January 1855 — 10 June 1899)
– Orchestra: Orchestre National de Belgique
– Conductor: Georges Sébastian
– Soloist: Christian Ferras
– Year of recording: 1953
Poème, pour Violon et Orchestre, Op. 25, written in 1896.
This composition is a staple of the violinist’s repertoire, has often been recorded and performed, and is generally considered Chausson’s best-known and most-loved composition.
Poème was written in response to a request from Eugène Ysaÿe for a violin concerto. Chausson felt unequal to the task of a concerto, writing to Ysaÿe: “I hardly know where to begin with a concerto, which is a huge undertaking, the devil’s own task. But I can cope with a shorter work. It will be in very free form with several passages in which the violin plays alone.” Chausson started composing in April 1896 and finished on 29 June while on holiday in Florence, Italy. He dedicated the work to Eugène Ysaÿe.
In the autumn of 1896, Eugène Ysaÿe, Ernest Chausson and their wives were on holiday at Sitges on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. At a party hosted by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol, Ysaÿe and Chausson’s wife on piano gave an impromptu sight-read performance of Poème; local townspeople who overheard it demanded it be encored three times. Present at the party were Enrique Granados and possibly Isaac Albéniz.
The Poème’s formal premiere was at the Nancy Conservatoire on 27 December 1896, conducted by Guy Ropartz, with Ysaÿe as soloist. But it was not really noticed until Ysaÿe gave the Paris premiere, at a Colonne Concert on 4 April 1897. Chausson was overcome by the sustained applause, something he had not experienced in his career to that point.
Ysaÿe also gave the first London performance of Poème, a week after Chausson’s untimely death in 1899.
The Poème consists of a single movement divided into three chained sections. It starts with Lento e misterioso, subsequent tempo indications are Molto animato, Animato, Poco lento, Poco meno lento, Allegro, Tempo I and the work ends Tranquillo.
The composition does not follow any formal model but is rhapsodic and moody, with rising and falling tensions and an advanced harmonic style. It strongly reflects the melancholy and introspection with which Chausson was imbued from an early age. He once wrote to his godmother about his childhood: “I was sad without knowing why, but firmly convinced that I had the best reason in the world for it”.
Joseph Szigeti always believed “the typically Ysaÿean sinuous double-stop passages” in the exposition could not have been written without the inspiration – or, indeed, the direct involvement – of Ysaÿe himself. This was later confirmed by Ysaÿe, who acknowledged he wrote the double-stopping “over Chausson’s framework”.
Because of its very free form, Claude Debussy became a great admirer of it, he especially loved its harmonic qualities.