LDV122

26 CHAUSSON, RAVEL ∙ TRIOS FOR PIANO, VIOLIN AND CELLO Thirty-three years after Chausson’s score, Ravel completed his only Trio in 1914. From your point of view, what had changed in the aesthetics of French music? Nathan Mierdl: The influence of Fauré! I think that in the course of four decades he brought about the transformation of French music. Not that his harmony was simpler – the opposite is even true in his late chamber music – but he brought a kind of fluidity to musical textures, a new light, illuminating a counterpoint drawn from reminiscences of the old forms of the Grand Siècle. With his influence on Saint-Saëns and Debussy as well as Ravel, Fauré was the catalyst for this far- reaching change, an alternative to the Austro-German conception of music. Laure-Hélène Michel: That was the project of the Société Nationale de Musique, founded in the aftermath of the defeat at Sedan in 1870: to conceive a new path in order to escape from the Romantic symphony. Victor Metral: One might even add that the reversion to older forms was a constant and a paradox in every period – think of the use of fugal form by Beethoven and Brahms – as a means of stimulating a new creative impulse.