Chamber music - "French Colors"
Time: 19:00
Location: Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music, “Cornel Țăranu” Amphitheatre Str. Bucium 2, 400526 Cluj-Napoca
Program: Claude Debussy — Sonata pentru violoncel și pian în Re minor, L. 135 · Xavier Phillips — violoncel · Itamar Golan — pian
Maurice Ravel — Piano Trio in A minor, M. 67 · David Grimal — violin · Xavier Phillips — cello · Philippe Cassard — piano
Gabriel Fauré — Piano quartet no. 1 · David Grimal — violin· Juan-Miguel Hernandez — viola · Xavier Phillips — cello · Philippe Cassard — piano
Let us enter the world of colors shaped by French Impressionism and Symbolism. Gabriel Fauré stands as the central figure of this program. A professor at the Paris Conservatoire, he taught Maurice Ravel and later appointed Claude Debussy to the institution’s governing board.
Fauré’s work is often divided into two periods. This quartet belongs to his earlier phase, which can be described as late Romanticism—akin to the painting of Édouard Manet, who helped open the path toward Impressionism. Debussy and Ravel, though frequently labeled as Impressionist composers, firmly rejected this comparison, insisting that their music should not be directly associated with painting.
And yet, today, it is difficult not to dream beyond Impressionism—toward the worlds of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, or Wassily Kandinsky. This program creates Baudelairean correspondences between sounds, harmonies, colors, scents, and impressions—an invitation into a gentle, sensuous reverie.