Ten Classical Pieces You Don't Care About (Yet): #8

    What if I told you that, born in the mid-19^th century, Emmanuel Chabrier quit his desk job upon discovering Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, devoting himself to his true love of musical composition? What about the fact that he was in with the Parisian avant-garde—Fauré, Manet, Mallarmé—even earning Ravel’s deep admiration? If I told you that Chabrier went to Spain and returned with the now-famous orchestral rhapsody, España, would it matter? While Chabrier’s comic operas remain somewhat popular today, you wouldn’t care to hear that he also left behind ‘smaller’ works of much color and beauty…would you?

“Impromptu,” an early work from 1873, is in ternary form (with an exquisite coda). The sample below comes from the end of a section in which charming and languid themes are “twice interrupted by a sarcastic element, as if Chabrier were ashamed of being sentimental.” Indeed, the journey that “Impromptu” takes us on proves that Chabrier’s biographers were right: he “concealed a sentimental young girl’s soul in the body of a stout water-carrier,” allying romantic sappiness with Rabelaisian burlesque. Here’s a sample from the seven-minute piano “Impromptu”:

The performer is Angela Hewitt, who loves French music and the images it evokes. Steven Haller states that "the very essence of Emmanuel Chabrier's music is rapier wit, piquant color, deftly turned rhythms, above all savoir faire. Either you have it or you don't." Angela Hewitt has it: in her hands, “Impromptu” is both a nimble Spanish dance and a perfumed ballad.

While Chabrier’s music and personality emitted humor throughout most of his life, he wrote these words during a mental and physical collapse: “Never has an artist more loved, more tried to honor music than me, none has suffered more from it; and I will go on suffering from it for ever." Like the barista in Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère—which hung above Chabrier’s piano (no joke)—Chabrier was inspired by an oddly restless muse. The breathtaking arpeggio at the end of “Impromptu” should be enough to inspire further exploration into this composer’s both saccharine and jovial world.