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CAMILLE THOMAS & JULIEN LIBEER
How did the idea of this programme ‘Reminiscences’ come about, and
how did you construct it?
C.T.:
The idea first came up in 2014 and we started building it around the Franck
Sonata. It’s a work that had a central place in our concerts of the 2015/16 season.
J.L.:
The Franck Sonata is something of a hybrid between French and German
music. In the latter style, if you set out your interpretative options clearly at
the start, things come quite naturally after that. But everything is much more
ephemeral in Franck. We spent a lot of time looking for the right way to do it, and
I’mmore and more convinced that it’s the kind of score where you never really find
‘the’ way to perform it.
C.T.:
When I’m preparing a work I like to make connections with the atmosphere
of its period, with literature and the other arts. The Franck Sonata belongs to
the world of Marcel Proust. So I decided to complete the programme with short
pieces by contemporaries of Franck that could have been played in the fashionable
salons of a time when there were fertile exchanges between artists.We know that
Ysaÿe and Franck were close friends: it’s a touching detail that Franck dedicated his
Sonata to the violinist on the occasion of his marriage. What’s more, the link with
Ysaÿe enabled me to present his Sonata for solo cello, a work that’s very seldom
performed and recorded, and which I think deserves a new lease of life.
So that meant we had Franck and Ysaÿe as the central pillars, and round them,
a few ‘madeleines’ . . .