SCHUBERT by Delphian Records

SCHUBERT

Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux violin

Joseph Havlat piano

premiere recording

Recorded on 6-8 December 2023 at St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington

Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis

24-bit digital mixing & mastering: Paul Baxter

Piano: Steinway model D, serial no 600443 (2016)

Piano technician: Norman Motion

Artist photography © Matthew Johnson

Session photography: foxbrushfilms.com

Design: John Christ

Booklet editor: John Fallas

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

A weighty set of variations sits at the heart of Schubert’s Fantasy in C major for violin and piano. The theme is from the song ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’ – a beguiling setting of a poem by Friedrich Rückert, composed by Schubert in late 1821 or 1822. Schubert often returned to songs some time after he’d written them, either to brush them up for publication, to reconsider or refine his interpretation of a poem, or to extract motifs, phrases, or sometimes whole themes for transformation into something new. His mixing and subversion of genre conventions have long prompted musings over what makes a song a song, what distinguishes a theme in a song from a theme in an instrumental work, and how meaning is constructed differently across the realms of song and instrumental music. The inclusion on this album of a violin-and-piano performance of ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’ shows us what Schubert was working with (and the extensive wrangling required to transform the song into a variation theme), and also demonstrates the ease with which violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux and pianist Joseph Havlat incorporate non-standard performance versions and reimaginings as part of a broad spectrum of musical interpretation. The roots of the recording stretch in many directions, encompassing the performers’ respective practices and memories of playing and improvising around Schubert

at home. Havlat’s ‘Sommer-abschied’ came about this way, while song and violin music are linked through childhood memories for Saluste-Bridoux:

[When I was] a child my mother sang Schubert lieder incessantly. She is more of a violinist than a singer, yet when she isn’t practising her Carl Flesch scales, the house is filled with her singing along to Cesária Évora, Yiddish lullabies or Schubert. These tunes formed the soundtrack to my early years, and when I hear one, another is never far down memory lane.

These personal and social backdrops to the recording are apt, given the centrality of Schubert’s family and friends for his own music-making. Schubert was from a musical family and received early tuition on the piano and violin from his brother and father respectively; the Schubert family string quartet played through his music at home. His earlier pieces for the violin – including three sonatinas of 1816 and the Sonata in A major of 1817 – were likely written with his brother Ferdinand in mind. As his networks expanded and his reputation grew, Schubert was continually drawn to the talents, interests, and backgrounds of new friends and contacts. A nine-year hiatus from composing violin music ended with the arrival in Vienna, in 1826, of the Czech virtuoso Josef Slavík, for whom the Fantasy was written and whose brilliance also likely inspired the Rondo in B minor.

The Rondo dates from October 1826, and was performed the following year by Slavík with the pianist Carl Maria von Bocklet. It was published in 1827 by Artaria, who gave it the title Rondeau brillant, perhaps in part to position it within the flourishing market for flashy and difficult concert pieces. A stately introduction starts with a juxtaposition of crisp, double-dotted piano figures and violin runs, before relaxing into a quieter, lyrical passage full of harmonic adventure – a sure sign that there’s more of that to come. The Allegro rondo theme itself is spiky and spirited, firmly in B minor, but soon gives way to a serene theme in the major. As it continues, a sprawling structure emerges, twisting and turning with plenty of thematic crossover between sections, abrupt shifts of mood and key, and – as we will also find in the Fantasy – distinctive hallmarks of the style hongrois , here including alla zoppa rhythms, melodic flourishes, and marchlike passages. (The term style hongrois refers to a set of tropes associated with the Romani music often heard in imperial Vienna, which many composers filtered into their music.) The fireworks become ever more spectacular towards the end, including a heart-in-mouth lurch up a minor third for a late statement of the theme in D major, perhaps because all other turbocharging effects had been exhausted; soon after, the music spirals into a dizzying B major coda.

With the Sonata in A major, we step back to 1817, when Schubert was twenty. The sonata’s ‘Duo’ nickname originates with Diabelli’s publication of the work in 1851, under the title Duo pour piano et violon. This may have been a whim of marketing, but it is apt as there is no clear hierarchy in the instruments’ roles. The opening Allegro moderato begins with a lilting left-hand piano part so melodious that it supersedes its functional expectations as a bass line, and instead joins the violin in a duo of gentle, chromatically inflected themes. Different duo dynamics emerge as the sonata proceeds: sometimes the piano introduces themes and passes them on to the violin, or vice versa; other passages are more conversational, with cheeky echoes and rapid back-and-forths between the instruments. The slithering chromatic lines of the lively scherzo occasionally converge in moments of contrary-motion mirroring, while the finale pairs its similar chromatic impulse with upbeat, lilting melodies passed jovially between equal partners.

The Andantino is an understated, overlooked gem, but explaining why requires a little indulgence in the technicalities of its musical workings. (This paragraph may be skipped if such technicalities don’t appeal!) The movement opens with the sonata’s most stable, self-contained theme: an eight-bar melody formed of two balanced

phrases, in a firm C major. The graceful violin line hovers around the note E – a pitch with natural resonance on the instrument that affirms all the more strongly the radiant major of the home key. The theme is stated only once before the music takes a sudden turn into less secure territory, signalled by forte chords and twisting, quietly, into a harmonic landscape full of flats. From there, Schubert magically weaves his way back to C major, where the opening theme is stated again, this time with the instruments’ roles inverted; again, it’s only heard once, as the forte chords return to spark another harmonic adventure. This time, the pull of the flats is stronger and the key signature changes, establishing A flat major as the movement’s second harmonic pole. From C major, this is a classic Schubertian move (one we will witness again in the Fantasy’s variations movement ), but it stands out more when considered within the sonata’s overarching A major tonality, from which A flat, though only a semitone away, is harmonically very distant. Another series of harmonic pivots returns us to C for a further perfect reprise of the opening theme. This time, the forte chords lead quickly to the movement’s close, which is unsettled first by a brief reminiscence of A flat and then – making use of chromatic common tones – by a gentle pull between C major and C minor in the final bars.

Throughout the movement, there has been no development of the opening theme, just some light ornamental variation in its different iterations. In an essay written in the Schubert centenary year 1928, the philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno wrote that his ‘themes occur as truth-characters, and his artistic remit is to restate their image passionately, again and again, once this image has appeared’. Schubert certainly has a propensity in his instrumental music to eschew expected developmental strategies, and instead to make use of repetition and contrast to project these themes into perpetuity.

There is no doubting the geniality of the Sonata as a whole: its temperamental fluctuations appear as little more than clouds drifting across a sunny summer’s sky. In selecting songs to complement their selection of cheerful chamber music, Saluste-Bridoux and Havlat sought something ‘a little more lyrical, maybe darker as well’ – a choice partially informed by their disconcerting rehearsal situation, in a ‘post-apocalyptic’ empty Paris during a major public transport strike. Du liebst mich nicht is as dark as anything in the Schubert song corpus. It sets a poem by August von Platen, whose work had a strong autobiographical streak, often allegorising his homosexuality and his despair through recourse to Greek myth. Many believe that Schubert understood the subtexts of the heartbroken anguish of

‘Du liebst mich nicht’ – which carefully avoids disclosing the sex of the beloved – and that the astonishing harmony deployed in his powerful, bitter setting gave musical expression to his empathy. In this violin transcription, the music is unchained from the specific meanings and ambiguities of Platen’s poem. In the absence of a sung text, just the stark, dejected title (‘You do not love me’) remains, bringing a strong sense of emotive yet abstracted meaning. The violin has ponderous repeated notes and dotted figures that sound syllabic – speech patterns without speech – and perhaps this linguistic absence heightens the sheer sonic expressivity of the melodic line.

In addition to achieving ‘something darker’, the inclusion of ‘Du liebst mich nicht’ links compellingly with other aspects of the programme. It was one of two ghazal songs written by Schubert in 1821–22, the other being ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’; both songs have distinctive rhyming structures – which can be keenly felt in the instrumental renditions –coupled with slight inflections of orientalism (in turn, this sort of ill-defined ‘otherness’ resonates with the incorporation of style hongrois features in the Fantasy and Rondo). The choice of key for ‘Du liebst mich nicht’ is also telling. Schubert originally wrote it in G sharp minor, but for publication transposed it up a semitone into the simpler A minor (no sharps or flats). Saluste-Bridoux and

Havlat have gone for the original G sharp, which is undoubtedly the ‘darker’ choice; it also allows for a large-scale harmonic connection to be forged with the prominent A flat sections of the Fantasy and the Sonata. Coincidence or not, such links deepen the significance of particular keys for Schubert, his performers, and his listeners.

The delightful strangeness of ‘Du liebst mich nicht’ on this recording doesn’t stop there, as Saluste-Bridoux and Havlat found an imaginative solution to the issue that the song’s vocal range lay too low for the violin’s normal tuning. Saluste-Bridoux explains:

I initially wanted to play it on a viola, but we eventually settled on a scordatura that is very much at the limit of what a violin G string can do (down to D sharp), creating a unique raspiness that floats in between a violin and viola timbre.

‘Scordatura’ refers to the practice of tuning one or more strings up or down to enable the performance of different pitches; it is often implemented to achieve particular timbral effects, and has an association with the uncanny (think of the violin being ‘tuned’ in Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre ). Here the timbral difference is subtle – there’s a slight eeriness in the absence of the instrument’s usual harmonic resonances – but it is striking and odd to hear the violin coaxing out a low D sharp.

The Fantasy in C major was composed in late 1827 and premiered (like the Rondo, by Slavík and Bocklet) in January 1828. It was Schubert’s final work for violin and piano, and one of three late excursions in the malleable fantasy genre, alongside the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy for piano, D760, and the F minor Fantasy for piano four hands, D940. Here, the continuous form has four movements, constructed around the central set of variations, and contours from the ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’ melody can be traced in most of the work’s thematic material. The C major-minor shimmering of the introduction brings to mind the similar opening of the famous C major String Quintet, D956, while the piano’s texture evokes the cimbalom, the first of several style hongrois elements heard throughout the piece. The Allegretto brings an upright theme in A minor – first on the violin, then in a close, piano-led canon –before brightening into A major for a display of energetic semiquavers. Two short pages of transitional material link this A major/minor material with the distant, delightful A flat major of the variations (the C/A/A flat tonal nexus enacted in the Fantasy appears elsewhere on this recording too, as we have seen).

From its premiere onwards, the piece has provoked some critical misgivings, mostly relating to the variations (one critic at the premiere couldn’t comment on how it

ended, as he’d walked out halfway through). In an article detailing this patchy history, Patrick McCreless summarises: the piece was ‘censured for indulging in cheap virtuoso variations, for violating the innocent “Sei mir gegrüsst”, and for failing to articulate a comprehensible structure’. While the song is interpreted in many ways – some renditions are buoyant, others solemn and beseeching, others sickly sweet and sentimental – the expansiveness of the variation form means the duo can develop and vary their expressive remit. In this recording, there is an overarching warmth and optimism, while livelier variations lean into cheeky wit or delight in sheer exuberant virtuosity. Saluste-Bridoux has commented that her approach to the piece as a whole has ‘changed drastically’ since she first played it a decade ago. Unconvinced by wider tendencies in the interpretation of Schubert’s late music to lean into the knowledge of his impending mortality (he died in 1828 at the age of 31), the duo deliberately ‘walked away from Schubert’s usual doom and gloom and tried to bring out his silliness and, at times, unnerving simplicity’. The variations eventually collapse into a brief reprise of the introduction, after which we are launched into the finale, unnervingly simple in its march-like C major. Hearing the short finale as an appended variation of sorts is bolstered by the sudden sinking back into A flat for a final reprise of ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’.

Sommer-abschied was written by Havlat specifically for this recording, and his description of ‘sitting at my piano playing through Schubert songs, digging for inspiration’ reflects the organic, domestic, playful conception of the programme as a whole. That this is a recent reimagining is immediately clear, but the slash in authorial attribution (‘Schubert/Havlat’) encourages us to split our attention between the 1820s and the subsequent musical time-travelling. The presence of Schubert’s song ‘Abschied’, D475, is primarily melodic – its simple, reaching contours are first presented high in the violin – but the song’s ethereal piano chords are equally generative within Havlat’s

expansive textures. Optimism is offered again in the decision to make this a summer’s farewell – in Havlat’s words, ‘a more languid version of “Abschied” was (re)conceived, and I thought it evoked the feel of summer’.

Frankie Perry works in Music Collections at the British Library and holds a postdoctoral role on a digital musicology project at the University of Oxford. She enjoys writing widely for concerts and recordings of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury music, with particular interests in adaptations and reimaginings of canonic music, song repertoires, and music by women.

Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) has been at the forefront of international artist development since 1984 – nurturing and launching some of the most significant careers on the world stage, including Ian Bostridge, Alison Balsom, the Belcea Quartet, and Delphian artists Sean Shibe and Philip Higham.

Released in August 2020 to great acclaim both in the UK press and internationally, recorder player Tabea Debus’s recital album Ohrwurm inaugurated a partnership between Delphian Records and YCAT which the two organisations have specially tailored to offer precious recording opportunities for the most promising young artists. The collaboration unites YCAT’s mission of developing careers at a world-class level with Delphian’s twenty-year reputation for bold, considered programming. From initial concept planning, through recording and editing to the final packaged and digital product, the scheme reflects and enhances both Delphian’s and YCAT’s commitments to nurturing their musicians’ artistic development and long-term careers.

Following on from Tabea Debus, LSO principal oboe Olivier Stankiewicz, longstanding violin/piano duo Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt, and accordionist Samuele Telari joined the Delphian family with releases in spring and summer 2021. The Castalian String Quartet joined the series in spring 2022, and the cellist Maciej Kułakowski at the end of that year, with releases from violist Jordan Bak and clarinettist Jonathan Leibovitz following in 2024. Brought to a close by the present volume from violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, the complete collection offers audiences around the world an engaging and varied series of albums, covering repertoire from the fourteenth century to the present day.

Delphian and YCAT are indebted to the generosity of Alastair and Liz Storey that supports this partnership.

www.ycat.co.uk

Biographies

Born in France, violinist Charlotte SalusteBridoux was the 2021 grand prizewinner of the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) and Concert Artists Guild (New York) International Auditions. Named as a Rising Star by Classic FM in 2022, she made her debut with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 2023 and with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2024. Her debut solo album Ostinata , a recital of works for unaccompanied violin by Biber, Ysaÿe, Bartók, Prokofiev and Bacewicz, was released in 2022 and received critical acclaim from Gramophone (‘an artist with something of her own to say, and something worth hearing’) and The Strad (‘lyrical flow and tonal beauty’), and a five-star review from BBC Music Magazine (‘bracingly insightful playing’).

An avid chamber musician, Charlotte has participated in prestigious festivals across the world, such as the Australian Chamber Music Festival and Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove. Other appearances include Wigmore Hall with duo partner Joseph Havlat, the BBC Proms with 12 Ensemble, and the Franck piano quintet at the Gstaadt Menuhin Festival alongside Alina Ibragimova, Lawrence Power, Sol Gabetta and Bertrand Chamayou. Charlotte recently joined the Chiaroscuro Quartet, an award-winning string quartet that performs on historical instruments.

Charlotte enjoys playing a wide variety of repertoire, including rarely heard concertos by Panufnik, Vasks, and Joseph Joachim; she has performed the latter’s Violin Concerto No 2 with the Budapest Concerto Orchestra, with whom she has also appeared as soloist in Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade

A student of Alina Ibragimova and Natasha Boyarsky, Charlotte graduated from the Royal College of Music, London and the Yehudi Menuhin School. She currently plays a Giovanni Battista Rogeri violin, and an Edwin Clément bow kindly loaned to her by the Swiss-based Foundation Boubo-Music.

Joseph Havlat is a pianist and composer from Hobart, Australia, based in London. Working as a soloist and chamber musician for music very new, very old and some things in between, he has performed in major concert venues around the UK, Europe, America, Japan and Australia.

Joseph is a leading interpreter of new music, having collaborated with composers such as Hans Abrahamsen, John Adams, Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Brett Dean, Michael Finnissy and Thomas Larcher. As a chamber musician he has performed with William Bennett, James Ehnes, Steven Isserlis, Katalin Károlyi and Jack Liebeck, as well as regular duo partners Lotte Betts-Dean and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux.

He is also a member of the LSO Percussion Ensemble, with whom he has released (on the orchestra’s LSO Live label) the premiere recording of John Adams’ twopiano work Roll Over Beethoven.

As a composer his music often explores the sounds of the natural world, imbued with the harsher shapes of human modernity. He has written music spanning forces from solo voice to large ensemble, including for Ensemble x.y, of which he was a founding member.

Joseph studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London under Joanna MacGregor from 2012 to 2018, receiving his BMus and MMus with distinction and also awards for exceptional merit in studentship and the highest recital mark for a postgraduate pianist. He has been a Young Artist of St John’s Smith Square, Oxford Lieder Festival and Kirckman Concert Society, and was a first-prize winner of the Royal OverSeas League Annual Music Competition.

Joseph teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, and enjoys growing ferns.

Ohrwurm ( YCAT Vol 1)

Tabea Debus, Jonathan Rees, Alex McCartney

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Rising talent Tabea Debus makes an immediate impression as she joins the roster of Delphian house artists, coaxing an astonishing spectrum of moods and timbres from an array of Renaissance and Baroque recorders.

Equally astounding is the tightness and responsiveness of her interaction with gamba player Jonathan Rees and lutenist Alex McCartney, while solos for recorder alone bookend the programme chronologically with music from the fourteenth century and the twenty-first.

‘There’s a lovely sense of affectionate irreverence … Renaissance and Baroque works are despatched with an almost folky exuberance, and it’s a toe-tapping joy’

— Presto Classical, August 2020, EDITOR’S CHOICE

Mozart: Sonatas K 304, K 378 & K 454 ( YCAT Vol 2)

Olivier Stankiewicz, Jonathan Ware

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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the craft of transcription reached its zenith. Popular works such as favourite opera arias were offered to the public in domestically playable versions, and chamber and orchestral works published with alternative scoring options or reworked entirely for different instruments. Thus taking its place in a now somewhat buried tradition that has its roots in the composer’s own time, this cherishable recording by LSO principal oboist Olivier Stankiewicz reimagines three of his best-loved violin sonatas for oboe and piano.

‘The expansive K454 and the genial K378 come off exceptionally well … Jonathan Ware is an ever-attentive co-conspirator’ — Gramophone, August 2021

‘1942’: Prokofiev – Copland – Poulenc ( YCAT Vol 3)

Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt

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Since winning First Prize at the 2016 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, New Zealand-born violinist Benjamin Baker has established a presence across the globe, with acclaimed solo, chamber and concerto appearances on five continents. His Delphian recording debut sees him joined by regular duo partner Daniel Lebhardt in a programme of three powerful works which were all begun in 1942. Each marked in its own way by a world at war, these sonatas show three of the twentieth century’s most individual composers engaging themes of private loss, political uncertainty and music’s enduring ability both to reflect and to transcend circumstance.

‘Baker and Lebhardt are superb partners, with a rare passion and energy’ — Apple Music, April 2021

J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations ( YCAT Vol 4)

Samuele Telari accordion

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Samuele Telari’s instrument is essential to his conception of this eternally fresh, kaleidoscopic work. The accordion’s bellows bring out and intensify dynamic contrasts in the slower variations, while the sparkling, faster ones are powered by a pure virtuosity that flows along the two manuals, imitating or chasing one another in resonant stereophony. Bach’s immortal masterpiece shines with new light here, keyboard dexterity meeting a string-like expressivity, both heightened by Telari’s interpretative subtlety and impeccable control.

‘The whole recording is joyful’

— BBC Radio 3 Record Review, July 2021

Between Two Worlds (YCAT Vol 5)

Castalian String Quartet

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From the darkness of night emerges day, the cycle of nature tracing the journey of the soul. The finely calibrated emotions of Orlande de Lassus’s song La nuit froide et sombre, and of his near-contemporary John Dowland’s Come, heavy sleep, are made newly vivid in transcriptions by the Castalian String Quartet, framing a programme which exists both inside and beyond time. Profound meditations on immortality and worldliness from Beethoven and Thomas Adès receive readings of extraordinary intensity, the Quartet’s burnished tone and astounding interconnectedness making this a debut that demands to be heard.

‘A series of intricately connected works, each performed with rare beauty and originality by a quartet working at the height of its powers’ — BBC Music Magazine, June 2022, RECORDING OF THE MONTH

Beau Soir: Debussy – Satie – Ravel – Poulenc (YCAT Vol 6)

Maciej Kułakowski, Jonathan Ware

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Acclaimed young cellist Maciej Kułakowski (Lutosławski International Cello Competition 2015, First Prize; Queen Elisabeth Competition 2017, Laureate) is partnered by pianist Jonathan Ware in an all-French recital programme that mingles the familiar with the reimagined. Elements of ‘Spanish’ style, blues and jazz, and the ironic humour of the Parisian café, encountered in sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc and Ravel (Kułakowski’s cello rendering of the latter’s second violin sonata), are echoed in a brace of shorter works that includes several further transcriptions –of three short pieces by Debussy and of Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes

‘Cellist and pianist convey the meaning of every crescendo or change of tempo, however minimal, proving that tiny details can have huge effects … The “wackiness” of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc has rarely been better demonstrated’ — BBC Music Magazine, December 2022, FIVE STARS

Cantabile: Anthems for Viola (YCAT Vol 7)

Jordan Bak, Richard Uttley DCD34317

The Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak has already achieved international acclaim for his radiant stage presence and dynamic interpretations. His Delphian debut sets two substantial twentieth-century works – Arnold Bax’s Sonata for Viola and Piano and Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae: Reflections on a Song of John Dowland, written respectively for Lionel Tertis and William Primrose – alongside unaccompanied pieces by Jonathan Harvey and Bright Sheng. The viola’s capacity for deeply felt, wordless song is further explored in Augusta Read Thomas’s Song without Words, receiving its premiere recording in a version specially composed for Bak and Uttley.

‘Bak is clearly going places … His pianist, Richard Uttley, is daringly empathetic. If you don’t love the viola, you will after hearing this’ — Norman Lebrecht, The Critic, April 2024

Eastern Reflections: Bartók – Lutosławski – Weinberg – Ligeti (YCAT Vol 8)

Jonathan Leibovitz, Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, Joseph Havlat DCD34319

The middle of the twentieth century was a period of tremendous conflict and upheaval throughout the world. Composers responded sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely to the horrors of fascism, war and state-controlled communism. Here, on his debut album, clarinettist Jonathan Leibovitz has brought together works by Eastern European and Soviet composers that draw on the folk-music heritage of their native lands while also bearing witness to powerful currents of history. Leibovitz’s charm and compelling artistry are matched by the contributions of pianist Joseph Havlat and, in Bartók’s Contrasts and a short Ligeti transcription, violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux.

‘a valuable addition to the already impressive list of recordings [of Weinberg’s Clarinet Sonata] … superb sound quality, and a very fine debut’ — Gramophone, Awards issue 2024