The halls were quiet during a July 1989 visit to the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique; this was, after all, the vacation period. Nevertheless, one could almost hear crowds of anxious and excited students simply by reading the bulletin board notices concerning the annual Paris Conservatoire Concours.
The Concours, the public and reviewed Conservatoire student examination traditionally concluding the academic year, has always been a tremendous opportunity for a young artist.1 The recognition and publicity certainly must have been appreciated by the students fortunate enough to win a coveted Concours Premier Prix, those students being obliged thereupon to terminate all Conservatoire studies in the discipline for which the prize is awarded and, usually, having to make a career in whatever way possible.
One wonders what career concerns might have been on the mind of Georges Gillet, the eminent oboist who graduated from the Conservatoire in 1869 at the unusually early age of fifteen. Gillet survived and became, to many, possibly the most phenomenal oboist in history, earning accolades for his musicianship, his technique, and his tone. In “Georges Gillet—Master Teacher and Performer” in the 1977 Journal of the International Double Reed Society, Laila Storch has written of the respect Gillet earned from his distinguished students; his graduates included Marcel Tabuteau, Alfred Barthel, Alexandre Duvoir, Georges Longy, and Georges Gillet’s own nephew, Fernand Gillet. All of these artists had outstanding orchestral careers and also established what many oboists call the French-American school of oboe performance and teaching.
This French-American oboe school comes from a direct line of teaching dating back to the Conservatoire’s first years. One particularly interesting aspect of the early history of the Paris Conservatoire was the great emphasis on wind instrument instruction. This was understandable, as the 1793 Institut national de musique, directed by Bernard Sarrette, was the product of the combination of two schools, one of which had been the École gratuite de la garde nationale parisienne, an adjunct school to the Musique de la Garde Nationale, a musical organization with military-civic functions including, presumably, outdoor concerts. Sarrette’s proposal for the administrative reorganization of the Institut suggested, for example, six oboe professors for twenty-four oboe students, while there were to be twenty-six clarinet professors to teach one hundred and four students.2 By 1795, when the Institut had been reorganized as the Conservatoire de musique, these numbers were not significantly reduced: four professors of oboe and nineteen of clarinet (compared with eight of violin).3 As in our modern symphonic band, clarinets apparently were needed in numbers similar to those of violins in the orchestra; bassoons were almost as numerous, possibly for reasons of balance. Paris became famous as an important center of brilliant wind instrument execution, and this undoubtedly established the woodwind quintet as we know it; Anton Reicha’s twenty-four quintets were inspired by a group of Paris-based woodwind virtuosi which included the oboist Gustave Vogt.
Although Gustave Vogt is the first of the Conservatoire oboe professors with a reasonably well-documented life, some information survives about some of his predecessors. Jacques Schneitzhœffer (1754-1829) is listed as Professeur de 1er classe of flute and oboe at the 1793 Institut.4 He apparently taught in various capacities at the Conservatoire after 1800 until the year of his death, and he was in the Opéra orchestra from 1789 to 1820.5 Pierre Delcambre preceded Schneitzhœffer as Professeur de 2e classe. Félix Miolan, another professor on the 1793 oboe faculty, enjoyed the distinction of being the father of Marie Miolan, later Madame Carvalho, the creator of Gounod’s operatic heroines Juliette, Marguerite, and Mireille;6 Miolan’s tenure at the Opéra lasted from 1792 to 1819.
Regarding François-Alexandre-Antoine Sallantin (1754-?), there exists some mystery about names and dates. George Conrey and Constant Pierre state his first name as François;7 Philip Bate gives it as Antoine.8 Sallantin may have used the name François to avoid confusion with his flutist uncle,9 though Conrey suggests that our Sallantin was known as Antoine to his family.10 He joined the Institut faculty not long after its establishment, and he taught at the Conservatoire until 1816. His career in the Opéra orchestra began in 1770 or 1773 and ended in 1812 or 1813.11 Sallantin took a leave of absence from his Opéra obligations in order to visit England and to study with the famous oboist Johann Fischer, known to us from Mozart’s letters and from a portrait painted by his father-in-law, Gainsborough.12 Bate gives 1816 as the year of Sallantin’s death, although Conrey states that a Conservatoire archivist was still searching for the date in 1986.13
Auguste-Georges-Gustave Vogt was born on March 18, 1781, in Strasbourg. A student of Sallantin, Vogt received his Premier Prix in 1799. He began his tenure in the Opéra-Comique orchestra in 1803, and he joined the Opéra orchestra in 1812. Vogt was appointed to a type of assistant or joint professorship at the Conservatoire in 1802,14 and in 1816 he succeeded to the senior position which he held until 1853. His career also included posts in the orchestras for the Théâtre Montanier (beginning 1798), the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique (1801), the Théâtre-Italien, and the Théâtre-Feydeau.
As a member of the Foot Grenadiers of Napoléon’s Imperial Guard, Vogt suffered to a degree from his connections to the Emperor; Bate describes him as having been “purged for suspected Bonapartist opinions.”15 Vogt’s reputation seems to have weathered all this, as he subsequently served in various musical organizations under Louis-Philippe in addition to his Opéra and Conservatoire duties. He was First Oboist (1828-1844) for the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, a newly formed performing organization made up of Conservatoire professors and graduates. He received the Légion d’honneur award in 1829.
Vogt shared with Sallantin a preference for a four-keyed oboe which added F Sharp and low B Natural keys to the traditionally used E Flat and low C keys.16 As it turned out, several of Vogt’s students, including Henri Brod, Apollon-Marie-Rose Barret, and Charles-Louis Triébert, were to play significant roles in designing the mechanical additions and refinements which resulted in the Conservatoire System oboe of Gillet’s era.
Vogt retired from the Conservatoire in 1853. The succeeding four oboe professors were all Vogt students, and his legacy also includes method books and a rich repertoire of oboe works. He died on May 30, 1870, outliving three of his successors.
Louis-Stanislas-Xavier Verroust was born on May 10, 1814. He received his Premier Prix in 1834, and he held positions in the orchestras of the Palais Royal, the Porte-St.-Martin, the Renaissance, the Théâtre-Italien, and the Opéra. Verroust also served as Chef de Musique for the Second Legion of the Garde Nationale. He succeeded Vogt to the Conservatoire professorship in 1853 and held the post for ten years. He composed at least twelve Solos de concert, several of which were used for the Concours during his tenure, and he also composed numerous sets of variations on popular operatic airs. He died on April 11, 1863.
Verroust’s successor, Charles-Louis Triébert, was born on October 31, 1810. Triébert was a Vogt student who had received his Premier Prix in 1829, five years earlier than Verroust. He performed as soloist with the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire and played in the orchestras of the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, and the Théâtre Italien.
Charles-Louis and his brother, Frédéric, inherited the administration of the Triébert instrument firm from their father, Guillaume. Frédéric was largely responsible for the various system changes in the Triébert oboe. Charles-Louis promoted the use of his family’s oboes at the Conservatoire, and his professorship undoubtedly assisted his efforts; Bate mentions this advocacy in connection with the Triébert Système 4, the “Système Charles Triébert.”17 Towards the end of the existence of the Triébert establishment the foreman was François Lorée, who set himself up in business soon after the death of Frédéric Triébert. Lorée and Georges Gillet were responsible for the designation, in 1881, of the Lorée oboe as the official Conservatoire oboe, the oboe thus required to be used by students attending the Conservatoire.18 The Lorées continued the Triébert traditions, with very few changes, even after François Lorée’s son Lucien sold the business to Raymond Dubois and went to work as an employee in his old firm.19 Dubois’s daughter married Robert de Gourdon, into whose hands the company passed and in whose family the establishment remains today.
Charles-Louis Triébert served only four years as the Conservatoire oboe professor. Although Frédéric was more involved than his brother in the family business,20 Charles-Louis’s work with the Triébert firm may have been a practical reason that he broke tradition by not composing the Concours solos for his students but instead using works by his teacher, Vogt. If Triébert’s legacy is not graced by a compositional output as well known as that of Vogt, Verroust, or Charles Colin, oboists owe much to him and to his family for the evolution of an oboe system that has changed little since his day.
Charles-Louis Triébert died on July 18, 1867. His successor, Vogt student Félix-Charles Berthélemy, was born on November 4 of 1829, the same year in which Triébert won his Premier Prix. Berthélemy received his Premier Prix in 1849 and served in the Opéra orchestra from 1855 to 1868. He died on February 13, 1868, having lived less than a year after his Conservatoire appointment.
Charles-Joseph Colin, the last Vogt student to hold a Conservatoire oboe professorship, was born in Cherbourg on June 2, 1832. He received his First Prizes in Oboe (1852), Harmony and Accompaniment (1853), and Organ (1854). In 1857 he won a second place Prix de Rome; the first place winner that year was Georges Bizet. Colin also received the titles of Officier de l’Academie and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.
Unlike his predecessors, Colin seems not to have held a post in the Opéra orchestra, but he did maintain the tradition of drawing from his own compositions or those of earlier oboe professors when proposing the required Concours work during his professorship. He composed eight Solos de Concours and a Grande fantaisie, all of which are in the same linked-movement style as that used by Vogt and Verroust in their solos. Colin died during the 1881 Concours at the age of forty-nine, and he was succeeded that year as Paris Conservatoire Professor of Oboe by Georges Gillet.
Georges Gillet
Although the starting place for IDRS Journal readers seeking information on Georges Gillet should be the Storch article in the 1977 Journal, the present unavailability of back orders of that issue suggests that a brief sketch of his career in this article will not be entirely superfluous, particularly as events in that career appear to have influenced his choice of solos on at least some occasions.
Georges-Vital-Victor Gillet was born in Louviers on May 17, 1854. He began his oboe studies at about the age of twelve and was soon attending the Conservatoire as a student of Félix-Charles Berthélemy (for less than two months) and Charles-Joseph Colin. Gillet received his Premier Prix in 1869 at the age of fifteen for his performance of that year’s required Concours work, Colin’s Deuxième solo de Concours. He subsequently held positions with the Théâtre Italien, the Concerts Colonne, the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, the Opéra-Comique, and the Opéra.
Gillet was internationally famous as a soloist. In addition to his duties as Principal Oboist with the Société des Concerts, he performed with the orchestra such works as the oboe concerti of Handel and the Countess of Grandval, and he was a founding member of the Société de Musique de Chambre pour Instruments à Vent, the renowned ensemble formed by Paul Taffanel with a nucleus of one flute and wind octet. (The Boston-based Longy Club, founded in 1900 by former Gillet student Georges Longy, had for many years a standing membership of eleven, a double wind quintet plus piano.) The Société gave the earliest performances of the Gounod Petite Symphonie, the Lefebvre Suite (not yet under that title), and the Thuille Sextet, as well as the long-delayed premiere of the Mozart Symphonie Concertante, K. 297b.21
Notwithstanding his brilliant career as a performer, Gillet exerted at least as overwhelming an influence as a teacher. Many of his students came to the United States, where they enjoyed performance and teaching careers of tremendous importance and length. Students able to trace their pedagogical ancestry back through several generations of teachers to Gillet are still studying the etudes of Barret, Brod, and Ferling, as well as Gillet’s own book of studies; as did Gillet’s students, modern oboists often learn scales and broken thirds in sets of three chromatically adjacent keys paired with their relative minors.
Gillet’s Études pour L’Enseignement supérieur du Hautbois deserves a special mention in any discussion of the Gillet legacy. In his dedicatory remarks to his students at the beginning of the Études, Gillet describes the necessity of composing advanced musical studies in order that the new music being written be performable by the emerging generation of oboists. He also suggests that contemporary composers use this book as a guide to new technical possibilities on the oboe. Regardless of whether one thus regards the Études as a solution to or as an inspiration for the highly complex passagework found in, for example, the compositions of Debussy and Ravel, oboists owe Gillet and his work a debt of gratitude for rendering playable and logical the inevitably difficult literature found in all eras.
Gillet’s achievements were recognized during his lifetime. In 1890 he was created an Officier de l’Instruction publique and, in 1904, a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. It was at that same July 30 ceremony of the Légion award that Gillet student Marcel Tabuteau received his Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatoire.
Georges Gillet’s apparently uncompromising personality on the job did not preclude a sympathetic and concerned interest in the welfare of his students. Certainly the death of three of his students in the First World War affected him, as did wartime hardships in general. His retirement for reasons of health went into effect on January 1, 1919, and he died on February 8, 1920. He was buried in Paris’s Cimitière Montmartre, the same cemetery where may be found the graves of Berlioz, Nijinsky, and Bernard Sarrette, first director of the Paris Conservatoire.
Georges Gillet influenced today’s solo oboe repertoire through his choices of the required works for the oboe participants in the annual Paris Conservatoire Concours. Like most modern performance competitions, the Concours has traditionally included, for each performance category, a required solo work performed by all of the competitors within that category; Berlioz once penned a story of an Érard piano which, after a competition, gave its own rendition of the Mendelssohn G Minor Concerto.22 Sometimes the required Concours piece for a performance area was composed by the Conservatoire professor for that discipline. When Gillet assumed the Conservatoire oboe professorship in 1881, it had been the tradition within the oboe department for the professor to prepare his students to perform Concours works by the professor himself or, occasionally, by past oboe professors. Gillet broke with this practice by varying the required Concours oboe repertoire through the use of works of such masters as Bach and Handel and by such contemporary composers as Büsser, Ropartz, Lefebvre, and Paladilhe. Charles Colin, Gillet’s oboe teacher throughout most of his Conservatoire study, was also well known as a composer of sufficient quality to receive a Prix de Rome.
Each of the required Concours oboe solos during Gillet’s professorship allows the necessary display of a competitor’s abilities within a brief time. An overview of the solos reveals the personal and stylistic differences expected in a repertoire with composers ranging from Bach and Handel through nineteenth-century oboists to contemporaries of Saint-Saëns and Franck, while the importance to the oboe repertoire of such works as the Paladilhe Solo, the Lefebvre Deux pièces, and the Guilhaud Premier concertino, as well as Gillet’s interest in the baroque repertoire, unusual for his time, cannot be overlooked. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to examine, beginning with the 1882 Concours (Gillet’s first as Professor of Oboe), the required Concours oboe solos during the nearly forty-year Conservatoire professorship of my “great-grandteacher” Georges Gillet.
The Paris Conservatoire Concours Oboe Solos, 1882-1919
It will be noted that the following list of the required Paris Conservatoire Oboe Concours works includes the 1919 solo, notwithstanding Gillet’s retirement effective at the beginning of 1919. The listing has been done by year, and the information presented includes the composer, title, edition(s) known to me, biography of the composer,23 a brief description of the work, and a listing of the Concours winners for the given year, with some of the major positions they subsequently held. Laila Storch’s compilation of Premier Prix and Second Prix recipients formed the basis for these listings, which were augmented by the Accessit (Honorable Mention) winners found in George Conrey’s “The Paris Conservatory: Its Oboe Professors, Laureates (1795-1984)” in the 1986 IDRS Journal.24 Ms. Storch’s familiarity with the history of Gillet and his predecessors was of invaluable help in identifying these solos. The designation ‘OP’ indicates an out-of-print edition, with availability subject to change. The solos by Colomer, Mouquet, Reuchsel, and Wormser were located only by a visit to the Bibliothèque Nationale. There are two Southern Music Company collections of oboe solos which include Concours works: Fifteen grands solos de concert and The Oboist’s Concert Album. Albert J. Andraud, the editor of these two collections, titles each numbered Colin work Solo de Concert, while the Millereau and Leduc editions use the designation Solo de Concours.
1882
Charles Colin: Deuxième solo de Concours, Op.
39
Edition: Leduc
The list of Concours oboe solos from Georges Gillet’s professorship begins with the required solo first used in 1869, the year of Gillet’s Premier Prix. Colin was Professor of Oboe at the Conservatoire during most of Gillet’s study there, Félix-Charles Berthélemy having died there less than two months after Gillet’s official admittance into the Conservatoire oboe class. Gillet chose Colin solos for seven of the Concours, more times than he used any other composer’s works.
The Deuxième solo de Concours could serve as the textbook nineteenth-century Concours oboe solo in its almost operatic style. The fast-slow-fast format allows a soloist to display dramatic, lyric, and coloratura qualities. In the Deuxième solo, a piano introduction in C Major launches the Allegro in which brilliant scales alternate with calmer sections. The Andante is in ABA form, with the second A section resembling the ornamented A style often used in Colin and Verroust slower movements. There follows a recitative, a type of passage not otherwise found in the Concours oboe solos of Colin. The Allegretto is rounded off by an Allegro vivace in the same key and meter.
1883
Georges Guilhaud: Premier concertino en sol
mineur
Editions: Costallat, Southern
(Fifteen grands
solos)
The Guilhaud Concertino opens with two forte statements in the piano, each followed by ascending staccati oboe scales in a recitative. The opening lyrical theme shows off the upper and middle ranges of the oboe, while the secondary theme bears a motivic resemblance to the opening chords. The ensuing operatic Andante is followed by an Allegretto dominated by more ascending scales and an increasingly important triplet figure, the work concluding with a high G above the staff.
1884
Charles Colin: Troisième
solo de Concours, Op. 40
Editions: Leduc, Southern
(Oboist’s
Concert Album)
Charles Colin’s Troisième solo de Concours opens with a moderately virtuosic Allegro moderato. After a cadenza, there is an Andante set in ABA form, the last A section preceded by a two-measure piano interlude of quick harmonic changes; the Southern edition wisely requests the pianist not to rush the upward chromaticism, as the harmony and the oboist both need to breathe. The A section returns, decorated with thirty-second note filigree, and the coda is built on melodic fragments from the B section.
The last movement, an Allegro, employs wide slurred intervals in the oboe writing and is rounded off by a Più mosso coda.
1885
Gustave Vogt:
Quatrième concertino
en ré mineur
Edition: Costallat (OP)
As noted earlier, Vogt was a champion of the four-keyed oboe. Notwithstanding this conservatism, several of Vogt’s students were involved in technical additions to the oboe mechanism. The Quatrième concertino would seem to have been a complex and chromatic work for Vogt’s instrument. It should be remembered, however, that what we know as Vogt’s Troisième solo de concert evolved from revisions of the less chromatically intricate Deuxième concerto.25 The Quatrième concertino performed by Gillet’s students may have been the result of similar changes.
The work, in three connected movements, involves brilliant diatonic and chromatic passagework. The opening Allegro non troppo displays a touch of Wieniawski in the harmony. The Larghetto cantabile is in ABA form, while the Rondo finale, in sonata rondo form, provides a welcome variety of scoring as its themes recur.
1886
Charles Colin: Septième solo de Concours
Editions: Leduc, Millereau (OP), Southern (Oboist’s Concert Album)
The Septième solo de Concours begins with an Andante set in the frequently used ABA form. As in the Troisième solo, the decorated A follows a piano interlude of interest for its rapidly changing harmony. The ensuing Allegro non troppo resembles the dramatic first movements of other solos, though this section actually functions as a ritornello before the Allegro cabaletta. The work concludes with a Più mosso in the same meter and key.
1887
Stanislas Verroust: Quatrième solo de
concert, Op. 77
Editions: Costallat, Southern
(Oboist’s Concert
Album)
The Quatrième solo de concert has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most substantial and popular Concours compositions by Stanislas Verroust. This is the only one of the twelve Verroust Concours solos listed with three arrangements of the accompaniment, a band version by Mastio in addition to the customary piano and string settings. Presumably this is the band arrangement in the Bibliothèque Nationale; in that arrangement, by Mastio, the first oboe (band) part and the solo oboe part are the same. It was the only Verroust composition used by Gillet as a Concours work.
The dramatic Allegro progresses from sustained wide ranging phrases to increasingly florid passages. The Andante is in ABA form in which the second A section is less obviously decorated than usual for similar sections in Verroust or Colin works. The cadenza preceding the second A section is more elaborate in the Southern edition than in the older publication. The work ends with a brilliant Rondo in a polacca style.
1888
Charles Colin:
Cinquième solo de
Concours, Op. 45
Editions: Leduc, Southern (Oboist’s Concert Album)
The opening Andantino of the Cinquième solo de Concours is in ABA form with a coda. The Allegro gives the oboist many display opportunities with scales and arpeggios over a steady eighth-note accompaniment. A contrasting episode in a slower tempo leads not to a reprise of the Allegro but to an Allegro coda.
1889
Gustave Vogt: Quatrième concertino en ré
mineur
(See 1885)
Second Prix: Alexandre-Joseph-Marie Busson Charles-Augustin- Louis Gaudard (Solo Oboe, Opéra; requested by Gillet to serve as substitute Professor of Oboe at Conservatoire during Gillet’s 1918 leave of absence)
1890
Georges Guilhaud: Premier concertino en sol
mineur
(See 1883)
1891
Charles Colin: Sixième solo de Concours,
Op. 46 Jean DuvergerEditions: Leduc, Southern Jean Duverger(Oboist’s
Concert Album)
The first movement of the Sixième solo de Concours is an Andante very much in the cavatina style. The B section of the Andante involves wide leaps and florid passages, while the A reprise includes a major-key statement of the opening theme. The setting of the final Allegro moderato in E Minor within a G Minor composition is vindicated by the connecting G Major tonality of the Più mosso coda.
1892
Comtesse de Grandval (Marie-Félicie-Clémence
de Reiset): Concerto en ré mineur, Op. 7
Editions: André
(OP), Southern
(separately and in Oboist’s Concert Album)
Marie-Félicie-Clémence de Reiset, the Comtesse de Grandval, was born in Saint-Rémy-des-Monts (Sarthe) on January 21, 1830. She studied composition with Flotow and Saint-Saëns, and she composed operas and other vocal works. It could well have been Saint-Saëns who accompanied Gillet in the Comtesse’s Concerto during the famous 1887 St. Petersburg tour involving Saint-Saëns and Taffanel, Gillet, and Turban of the Société de Musique de Chambre pour Instruments à Vent. In admonishing his students not to complain about cold fingers when they had central heating, Gillet referred to the low temperature of a St. Petersburg concert hall in which he performed the Concerto.26 Even before using the work for the Concours, Gillet frequently performed the Concerto, apparently with orchestral accompaniment.
The Concerto is set in three movements. The first movement, an Allegro moderato in sonata allegro form, is not so remarkable for its theme at the oboe entrance as for the persistent ascending and descending pairs of slurred sixteenth-notes, particularly in the exposition and coda. The second movement is a charming Andantino con moto, while the concluding Moderato maestoso has a touch of the sonata rondo about it. There is a Franckian sweep in the closing pages, and the brilliant slurred sixteenth-note pairs assert themselves in a most demanding coda.
1893
Charles Colin: Solo en sol mineur (?)
I was not able to trace more specific information as to the identity of the Colin solo used in 1893; Colin’s Grande Fantaisie is in G Minor, although it is likely that the Conservatoire records would show that title. The Sixième solo de Concours, also in G Minor, had been used as recently as 1891, and there is no other case during the Gillet years of so soon a repeated use of a Concours oboe solo. This mystery work could be yet another Colin solo, one not as readily available as the Solos de Concours and the Grande Fantaisie.
1894
Georges Guilhaud: Premier concertino en sol
mineur (see 1883)
1895
Charles Colin: Cinquième solo de
Concours, Op. 45 Henri-Alphonse Bergès(see 1888)
1896
Gustave Vogt: Quatrième concertino en ré
mineur (see 1885)
1897
Charles Lefebvre: Pièce en la mineur (see
1902)
1898
Émile Paladilhe: Solo
Editions:
Heugel (OP), Rubank (titled Concertante)
Southern (Fifteen grands solos)
Émile Paladilhe was born in Montpellier on June 3, 1844. At the Paris Conservatoire he studied piano with François Marmontel (teacher of Bizet, Debussy, and d’Indy), organ with François Benoist (Chef du chant at the Opéra), and counterpoint with Halévy. He was a Premier Prix recipient in Piano and Organ in 1857, and he was awarded a Prix de Rome in 1860 for his cantata Le Czar Ivan IV. He composed many operas, sacred works, orchestral compositions, and songs, and he was a member of the Institut of France. His opera Patrie! was particularly successful; earlier, Verdi had obtained from Sardou the libretto rights, and Paladilhe had to wait close to a year for Verdi to withdraw his claim.27 Paladilhe died in Paris on January 6, 1927.
The Paladilhe Solo is one of the best known of the oboe Concours works from any period. A brisk succession of chords announces an oboe cadenza followed by a lyrical Andante assai moderato distinguished by harmonic exploration from G Minor to B Minor and back. The Allegro non troppo is a rondo based on a major-key variation of the Andante assai moderato theme.
1899
B. M. Colomer: Fantaisie en la
Edition:
Breitkopf (OP)
The Fantaisie is dominated by two motives: a ringing set of descending chords in the piano introduction, and a hesitant oboe theme punctuated by rests. The generally lyric mood leaves one unprepared for the bravura coda, in which elements of the two main themes are blended.
1900
Comtesse de Grandval: Andante and Finale from
Concerto en ré mineur, Op. 7 (See 1892)