by Céleste Pagniello
Céleste Pagniello is a PhD candidate in musicology at Princeton University. Her research interests include everything Tchaikovsky, Russian and Soviet ballet, socialist art, and the intersection of philosophy, politics, and music. Céleste has spent time studying in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Minsk, Belarus and holds a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University, and two Masters of Philosophy degrees from the University of Cambridge.
Today’s concert transports us back to January 14, 1914, at the Salle Érard in Paris, France, where the inaugural concert of the 1913-1914 season of the Société musicale indépendante (Independent Musical Society) took place. This concert featured the premiere of society founder Maurice Ravel’s “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé,” as well as the premieres for works of Florent Schmitt, Maurice Delage, and Igor Stravinsky. Recreating the program of this historic concert, today’s performance features works by Ravel’s French and France-based contemporaries, as well as fellow members of the Société indépendante, taking us through the imaginations of some of France’s most celebrated composers.
Having left the overly conservative Société nationale de musique (National Society of Music), the then-premiere institution for the promotion and development of music in France, Ravel joined with fellow composers Gabriel Fauré, Charles Koechlin, and Florent Schmitt to form a new society in 1909. In a letter to Koechlin, Ravel outlined the goals for his new society, embracing a repertoire spanning both French and international compositions across various genres and styles and asserting his desire for independence from the Société nationale. With Fauré appointed its head, the Société musicale indépendante soon eclipsed its rival but ultimately closed down in 1935, four years before the Société nationale’s own dismantling.
In this recreated concert, we embark on a musical journey through early 20th-century France, with each work and composer offering a different glimpse into the rich tapestry of French musical expression.
To begin the program, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Rhapsody of Danish and Russian Airs, Op. 79 (1887), immediately enchants with its combination of melodic motifs from Denmark and Russia. Written for renowned French musicians Paul Taffanel (flute), George Gillet (oboe), and Charles Turban (clarinet), the piece premiered in Saint Petersburg, Russia, with Saint-Saëns at the piano. Thoroughly well received, particularly by Anton Rubinstein, who was in attendance with his students from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, the piece would become a staple of chamber music performances across Europe, with Saint-Saëns and his compatriots giving additional performances in Moscow, London, Bonn, and Paris. The piece features three airs, one Danish and two Russian, each introduced by a different wind instrument before the others join in with variations. BBC Radio 3 head of music Edward Blakeman states, “[this] is Saint-Saëns at his most relaxed and entertaining.”
With the oldest piece on the program, Saint-Saëns’s inclusion signalled the younger society’s success over its more conservative rival, as the composer was one of the original founders of the Société nationale in 1871. Now a member of the new Société indépendante, Saint-Saëns provided a bridge between a generation of older French composers active in the Second Empire and those born in the early days of the Third Republic and indicated his break from the more conservative group of composers that made up the Société nationale.
The first head of the Société musicale indépendante, Gabriel Fauré was both a student of Saint-Saëns and a teacher of Ravel. His timeless Pavane, Op. 50 (1889), exudes elegance and grace. Originally composed for the piano, it is now better known for the orchestral arrangement, which premiered, ironically, at a concert of the older Société nationale. Dedicated to his patroness, Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe, Fauré immediately felt that the piano version did not do justice to her immense support, and, taking her recommendation, created a much grander orchestral arrangement. This arrangement grew particularly popular when combined with dance, even joining the repertoire of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917, with choreography by Léonide Massine, in the ballet Les Jardins d’Aranjuez. In Fauré’s music, Massine heard “haunting echoes of Spain’s Golden Age” and felt the same feelings of melancholy he felt when gazing upon Diego Vélazquez’s paintings.
The choice of Fauré as the head of the Société indépendante had a similar purpose as the inclusion of Saint-Saëns amongst its membership and on this program. Fauré, like Saint-Saëns, was present at the founding of the older Société nationale, and his break from the conservative group helped legitimize the newer society and attract new membership, ushering in a new ethos for French music in the early 20th century.
A second pavane is appropriately placed after Fauré’s in this program. Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899) was written while Ravel was a student of Fauré’s at the Paris Conservatoire. Originally for solo piano, Ravel also published an orchestral arrangement, like his teacher, in 1910, and he also dedicated it to his patroness, the Princesse de Polignac. Clearly inspired by Fauré, the link to Vélazquez’s art is also present in Ravel’s iteration of the pavane, as the younger composer claimed his piece was meant to represent a pavane as it was danced in one of Vélazquez’s paintings.
Contemporary critic Samuel Langford claimed this work was abnormal of Ravel, stating, “the piece is hardly representative of the composer, with whom elusive harmonies woven in rapid figuration are the usual medium of expression. In the Pavane we get normal, almost archaic harmonies, subdued expression, and a somewhat remote beauty of melody.”
The first half of the concert concludes with Florent Schmitt, a lesser-known French composer who was also instrumental in the founding of the Société indépendante. Following Fauré’s and Ravel’s dance-inspired pieces, Schmitt’s work, Une semaine du petit elfe Ferme-l’oeil, Op. 58 (1912), was also turned into a ballet presented at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1924. The suite of seven pieces for piano duet is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s book, The Songs of Hialmar, where a young boy, Hialmar, is visited every day of the week by the little elf, Ferme-l’oeil, who helps him sleep and conjures up his dreams. Schmitt intended it to be played by a piano teacher and their student, and so the piano primo part is far less elaborate and does not require the pianist to shift their hands. This was the first of four premieres on the January 14, 1914 concert program.
Far less known than his contemporaries, Schmitt is a controversial figure. As a music critic, he would often interrupt concerts in order to shout his (usually negative) views, and a communist journal once reported that he interrupted Jewish composer Kurt Weill, who had recently fled Germany, in order to praise Hitler. Schmitt was frequently attacked for his Nazi sympathies and collaboration with the Vichy regime.
Following a brief intermission, we return to our musical journey with three song cycles set to poetry. The first, by Maurice Delage, Four Hindu poems (1912), was written during the composer’s visit to India and remains his best-known work. The January 14, 1914 performance was its premiere. Each movement is named for a city that Delage visited, and he believed, according to biographer Philippe Rodrigues, that he would benefit as a composer from “the authenticity of an exoticism drawn from the source.” Despite being a favored student of Maurice Ravel’s, Delage suffered from an inferiority complex that drove him to search for advantages wherever he could find them.
Three of the four songs are dedicated to other composers on this program; the first, which features a text by Bhartṛhari, to his teacher, Ravel, the third, with an anonymous text, to his friend Florent Schmitt, and the last, also with a text from Bhartṛhari, to Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky and Delage were extremely close, often ending their letters with “kisses and hugs,” or “forever yours.” The notion that their relationship was more than just one of deep friendship, however, is doubtful. The second song, with no dedicatee, sets a poem by Heinrich Heine.
Igor Stravinsky is the only non-French composer on this program, but his career was firmly intertwined with the happenings of the French musical scene of the early 20th century. In 1912, while completing The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky came across an anthology of Japanese poetry and wrote, “the impression which they made on me was exactly like that made by Japanese paintings and engravings.” He chose three haiku and composed Three Japanese Lyric Poems (1913), another premiere for the January 14, 1914 concert. Just like Delage, Stravinsky dedicated his three songs to other composers on the program: first Delage, then Schmitt, and finally Ravel.
These three songs offer a glimpse into Stravinsky’s exploration of exoticism and rhythmic innovation. It reflects his fascination with Japanese culture and his dedication to complex musical forms, as the musical language is inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (1912).
As the string connecting all other parts of this program, Ravel’s second piece of the evening, Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913) makes for an appropriate conclusion. The complete edition of Mallarmé’s poems had only been published a few months earlier, so the composition was timely but not without difficulties. Ravel was greatly relieved that he managed to secure the rights to Mallarmé’s poetry, as Claude Debussy had also been seeking this approval. Debussy was incensed at Ravel’s success, particularly as French musical criticism had long portrayed Debussy as the musical heir to Mallarmé’s legacy. Debussy vowed to out-do Ravel in musical settings of Mallarmé, and wrote his own song cycle on two of the same poems as Ravel. This incident fractured the long-respectful relationship between the two composers, and Stravinsky claimed that they did not speak to each other for the entirety of the year 1913.
The practice of dedicating individual songs to fellow composers continues here, as he dedicated the first song to Stravinsky, the second to Schmitt, and the third to Erik Satie. The final three pieces on this program are also all nearly identical in instrumentation and betray the influence of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, a piece that captivated musical society in the early 20th century.
Artist Bios
Geoffrey Burleson, piano
Equally active as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and jazz performer, Geoffrey Burleson, pianist, has performed to wide acclaim throughout Europe and North America. Current recording projects include Camille Saint-Saëns: Complete Piano Works, on 7 CDs, for the Naxos Grand Piano label. The first five volumes have been released to high acclaim from Gramophone, International Record Review, Diapason (France) and elsewhere. Mr. Burleson’s concerto appearances include the Buffalo Philharmonic, New England Philharmonic, Boston Musica Viva, and the Holland Symfonia in the Netherlands. He has also appeared as featured soloist at the Bard Music Festival, International Keyboard Institute and Festival (New York), Monadnock Music Festival, and the Santander Festival (Spain). He is a core member of the American Modern Ensemble, and the David Sanford Big Band. Mr. Burleson teaches piano and chamber music at Princeton University, and is Professor/Director of Piano Studies at Hunter College-CUNY.
Tomoko Fujita, cello
Hailed as “first-rate” by The Boston Globe, cellist Tomoko Fujita enjoys an active musical life as a performer and educator. She was a founding member of the Bryant Park Quartet, and has performed with esteemed artists such as Itzhak Perlman, members of the Cleveland, Emerson, and Juilliard String Quartets, dancer Wendy Whelan, and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. She is Assistant Professor at Montclair State University where she also coordinates the Cali Pathways Project, an equity and access initiative to support talented young musicians from under-resourced backgrounds. She also teaches at Princeton University and coaches at the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program. In the summers, Tomoko is in residence at the Kinhaven Music School in Weston, VT. For more information, visit www.tomoko fujita.com.
Margaret Kampmeier, piano
Pianist Margaret Kampmeier enjoys a varied career as soloist, collaborative artist, and educator. Equally fluent in classical and contemporary repertoire, she has concertized and recorded extensively. She has performed with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Kronos Quartet, and Mirror Visions Ensemble. She co-founded New Millennium Ensemble, a new music sextet that won the 1995 Naumburg chamber music award. As orchestral keyboardist, she performs regularly with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, as well as the New York Philharmonic, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Kampmeier can be heard on the Albany, Centaur, CRI, Koch, Nonesuch, and Bridge labels. Ms. Kampmeier teaches piano and chamber music at Princeton University. She is also on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. Ms. Kampmeier earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, and is deeply grateful for the shared wisdom of her mentors, Barry Snyder, Jan Degaetani, Julius Levine, and Gilbert Kalish.
Haram Kim, violin
Haram Kim is a senior at Princeton University majoring in Molecular Biology with a certificate in Music Performance in the violin. He has been the violin for 17 years, and is currently the concertmaster for the Princeton University Orchestra. He also enjoys playing chamber music as a member of Opus, a student led chamber music organization. When not playing music, he enjoys playing volleyball with his friends and spending time eating good food.
Alexandra Knoll, oboe
Alexandra was born in Zimbabwe and emigrated to South Africa at age eleven. After graduating from high school, she worked professionally for two years in the Natal Philharmonic Orchestra and then moved to the United States for further studies. She is an alumna of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. Alexandra is much in demand as an oboist in New York City. She is Associate Principal Oboist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Principal Oboist of the American Symphony Orchestra and a member of New York City Opera. As well as playing with the Metropolitan Opera, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, ABT and the Orchestra of St. Lukes, she is also active on the Broadway scene. She was the oboist for “Mary Poppins”, “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Miss Saigon”. She subs on Sweeney Todd and has been featured on recordings by Rufus Wainwright, Lenny Kravitz, Antony and the Johnsons and Baby Dee. Alexandra is on the oboe faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Maxim Moston, their daughter and cats.
Anna Lim, violin
A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, violinist Sunghae Anna Lim has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and was a member of the Cassatt Quartet. A keen advocate for new music, she is the violinist of the New Millennium Ensemble, winner of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, and a frequent guest of groups such as Talea Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, and Da Capo Chamber Players. She has an abiding interest in early music, through her work with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Salzburg. As an educator, she has studied many approaches to violin playing in Europe and the US and currently teaches violin at Princeton University. Regular music festival appearances include the Portland Chamber Music Festival, Maine Chamber Music Seminar, Prussia Cove, the Weekend of Chamber Music, White Mountains Music Festival, and the Wellesley Composers Conference. Anna serves as the artistic advisor for the Trenton Music Makers, an El-Sistema inspired program for children in Trenton, NJ. She received a BA from Harvard University in History and Literature and completed her Diploma at the Salzburg Mozarteum under Sandor Vegh.
Michael Pratt, conductor
Michael Pratt, co-founder of the Richardson Chamber Players, is in his 47th year serving on the faculty at Princeton University. His principal duties are as Conductor of the PU Orchestra and as Director of the certificate Program in Music Performance since its inception in 1991. The program he has built at Princeton has come to serve as a model for other American universities as an effective platform from which students can deepen their musical skills and insights in the context of a liberal arts program. Pratt was educated at the Eastman School of Music and lists among his mentors Gunther Schuller, Otto Werner Mueller, and Gustav Meier. He has conducted several highly regarded US ensembles, including the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and the orchestras of Detroit, Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Buffalo and Rochester. He has also twice been a guest conductor with the Odessa (Ukraine) Philharmonic. In October 2023, Pratt published his first novel, The Copyists, available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Barbara Rearick, mezzo-soprano
Barbara Rearick’s career has taken her around the world singing with orchestras including Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Buffalo, Colorado, Pasadena Pops, Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, Berlin. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Symphony Space, BAM with the Mark Morris Dance Group and sang in the premiere of Douglas Cuomo’s opera Arjuna’s Dilemma; Lera Auerbach’s The Blind with the American Opera Project for the Lincoln Center White Light Festival, and Chicago Symphony’s “MusicNow” series. Her chamber music credits include performances with The New York New Music Ensemble and The New York Chamber Ensemble. Ms. Rearick has appeared on BBC World Service Radio, WQXR, and NPR. A native of central Pennsylvania, she has been on the performance faculty at Princeton University for 20 years.
Deborah Selig, soprano
Soprano Deborah Selig’s voice has been described by the press as “radiant,” “beautifully rich,” “capable of any emotional nuance,” and “impressively nimble.” Ms. Selig performs repertoire spanning the baroque to contemporary in opera, oratorio and chamber music. Passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of singers, Ms. Selig currently serves on the voice faculties of Wellesley College, Brown University, and the summer Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Operatic appearances include Micaela in Bizet’s Carmen with Dayton Opera, Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Boston Lyric Opera, Musetta in Puccini’s La Boheme with Central City Opera, and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Kentucky Opera. Concert performances have included Ravel’s Chansons Madécasses with Worcester Chamber Music Society, Amy Beach’s The Chambered Nautilus with Wellesley College Choir, Brahms’ Requiem with Buffalo Philharmonic, Haydn’s Creation with Harvard University Choirs, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Masterworks Chorale, and Handel’s Messiah with Rhode Island Philharmonic. For more information: www.deborahselig.com.
Stacey Shames, harp
Harpist Stacey Shames has appeared in concerts from New York to the Far East. She won First Prize in the American Harp Society National Competition and a top prize in the 11th International Harp Contest in Israel. Ms Shames is the harpist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and performs often with the New York Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony. She can be heard on over 150 film and television soundtracks, and appears on-screen in several, including the acclaimed series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She has collaborated with Stevie Wonder, Renée Fleming, Joshua Bell, Andrea Bocelli, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Cole and Michael Bublè, among many others. Her trio, Aureole, comprised of Flute, Viola and Harp, has released ten recordings and champions works by current eminent composers. Stacey Shames is currently the Faculty Lecturer in Harp Performance at Princeton University.
Sarah Shin, flute
Dr. Sarah Shin is the Lecturer of Flute at Princeton University, a member of the Richardson Chamber Players, a William S. Haynes Artist, and a featured artist on tonebase Flute. Sarah can be heard on all streaming platforms with her Mozart Flute Concertos CD under Sony Classical with Conductor Christian Schulz and the Savaria Symphony Orchestra. Some of her recent highlights include performing with Lizzo at the 2023 Met Gala, performing a mini-tour with the Budapest MAV Symphony Orchestra, and performing a mini-tour with the Savaria Symphony Orchestra all over Europe. Sarah has performed in some of the largest concert halls all over the world such as Symphony Hall in Boston; Carnegie Hall and Weill Recital Hall in New York City; Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, South Korea, Stiftung Mozarteum: Großer Saal in Salzburg, Austria; Golden Hall at Musikverein, and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. Sarah attended high school at Walnut Hill School for the Arts and is an honorary alum of the Boston Flute Academy. She received her BFA at Carnegie Mellon University, her MM from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as a Jacobs Scholar Fellow, and her DMA from Rutgers University. Sarah is grateful to her teachers and mentors Jeanne Baxtresser, Alberto Almarza, Bart Feller, Thomas Robertello, and Judy Grant. www.sarahshinflute.com
Jo-Ann Sternberg, clarinet
Jo-Ann Sternberg leads a diverse musical life in the New York area as a chamber musician, orchestral player, music educator, and interpreter of new music. A member of Borealis, Riverside Symphony, and the orchestras of Oratorio Society of NY, NY Choral Society, and St John the Divine; Jo-Ann also regularly performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the ACO, the ASO, Mark Morris Dance, and Musicians from Marlboro; and can often be heard playing in Broadway musicals. A graduate of Tufts University/New England Conservatory’s dual degree program (English/Music) mentored by Peter Hadcock, she continued her studies at Yale University with David Shifrin and at The Juilliard School with Charles Neidich where she was awarded the William Kapell Memorial Award. Currently, Ms. Sternberg serves on the faculties of Princeton University, Rutgers Mason Gross, Juilliard’s MAP, and MSM Pre-College. She is Founder/Artistic Director of The Maine Chamber Music Seminar at Snow Pond for college/graduate level musicians. Ms. Sternberg is a Selmer Artist.
Jessica Thompson, viola
Violist Jessica Thompson is a passionate chamber musician and educator who performs regularly throughout the United States and abroad as a member of the Daedalus Quartet. The quartet, in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, has premiered works by such composers as Fred Lerdahl, Joan Tower, Richard Wernick, and Vivian Fung. Ms. Thompson has appeared in recital in New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Princeton, NJ, and has performed at numerous festivals, including Portland (ME), Charlottesville, Mimir, Halcyon, Bard Summerscapes, and Skaneateles. She performs regularly as a member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra and the String Orchestra of NYC and teaches at Princeton and Columbia Universities, as well as at the Maine Chamber Music Seminar.
Kyle Tsai
Kyle Tsai is a junior at Princeton University majoring in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with a certificate in Music Performance on the clarinet. At Princeton, he plays clarinet in the Princeton University Orchestra and Opus, a student-run chamber music organization. He currently studies with Dr. Jo-Ann Sternberg at Princeton University and has studied with Timothy Lines and Alexander Potiomkin in the past. Kyle has performed solo repertoire with local Houston orchestras, including Weber’s First Clarinet Concerto (Mvt. 1) and Weber’s Concertino for Clarinet. Outside of music, he enjoys playing basketball and making YouTube videos.
Audrey Yang, flute
Audrey Yang is a junior majoring in French and pursuing minors in Linguistics and Music Performance. She plays flute in the Princeton University Orchestra and Opus and is a woodwind coach for the Trenton Youth Orchestra. Currently a student of Dr. Sarah Shin at Princeton University, Audrey has previously studied with Gitte Marcusson (Royal College of Music), Jeffrey Khaner, and Joseph Lu. Audrey is a YoungArts winner and was a finalist in the 2020 National Flute Association High School Soloist Competition.
