Daniel Schreiner: "Les cailloux dans l’eau: l’infinité de la musique française pour piano"

American pianist Daniel Schreiner presents a solo recital celebrating the experimental dynamism of French piano music, the result of a year of study at Paris’s La Schola Cantorum and the Fondation des États-Unis. Featuring a panoramic selection of Préludes by Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Henri Dutilleux, and Guy Sacre, Schreiner’s concert includes short film collaborations with five visual artists from the Fondation des États-Unis, responding to French piano music’s vibrancy and creative freedom. The Program Hope Curran (n. 1994), Daniel Schreiner (n. 1991) – Interlude 1 Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) – Préludes: No. IV in Fa majeur Guy Sacre (n. 1948) – Préludes: III. Rapide Claude Debussy (1862-1918) – Préludes, Premier livre: Les collines d’Anacapri Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 2 Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: Brouillards Sacre – Préludes: IX. Lent, recueilli Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) – Préludes: II. Sur un même accord Mallory Mayhew (n. 1993), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 3 Fauré – Préludes: No. V in Ré mineur Debussy – Préludes, Premier livre: Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest Sylvie Mayer (n. 1996), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 4 Debussy – Préludes, Premier livre: Des pas sur la neige Sacre – Préludes: X. Lent et triste Fauré – Préludes: No. VII in La majeur Rebecca Arthur (n. 1996), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 5 Dutilleux – Préludes: I. D’ombre et de silence Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune Debussy – Images, Première série: Reflets dans l’eau Tristan Murail (n. 1947) – Cailloux dans l’eau (2018) Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: Ondine Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) – Gaspard de la nuit: Ondine "As part of my studies this year in Paris, I have been exploring the development of 20th century French piano music from different angles. A chief focus has been examining the prelude as a site for musical experimentation. Defined as a short piece of music with a variable, open-ended form, the prelude first appeared in the keyboard compositions of French 17th-century composers like François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau. By the beginning of the 20th century, two masterful sets of preludes by Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy helped to expand and redefine the genre. Fauré’s preludes are among the least known of Fauré’s piano works, marked by dense, contrapuntal textures, long melodic lines, and subtle, mysterious restraint. By contrast, Debussy’s two books of preludes represent the pinnacle of his innovative writing for the piano: with descriptive titles appearing at the end of each piece rather than the beginning, these 24 pieces test the boundaries of the piano’s technical and expressive capabilities. Later in the 20th century, Henri Dutilleux’s Trois Préludes reflect Debussy’s experimental treatment of the genre, exploring extreme contrasts of dynamics and articulation, as well as exploiting the effects of each of the piano’s three pedals. Contrastingly, Guy Sacre’s Vingt-Quatre Préludes follow the Chopin model of shorter studies in all keys, yet nevertheless reflect Sacre’s unique, free treatment of harmony and dissonance. In the spirit of eclectic creative freedom that I feel the prelude represents, I am performing selected preludes by Fauré, Debussy, Dutilleux and Sacre in a different, rearranged format, interspersed with five “interludes” featuring music composed by myself and visual animations/video by students at the Fondation des États-Unis. The second half of the program focuses on French composers’ obsession with the depiction of water in piano music. In 2018, Tristan Murail composed Cailloux dans l’eau as an homage to Debussy: with a formal structure is almost identically based on Debussy’s seminal Reflets dans l’eau of 1905, Murail’s piece is nonetheless distinctly contemporary, reflecting his own harmonic language derived from the analysis of a fundamental tone and its overtones. Next, following the success of Maurice Ravel’s “Ondine,” the first movement of his Gaspard de la nuit, Debussy composed his own version of “Ondine” in his second book of preludes. Ondine refers to the ancient Greek story of a water nymph who lures seafarers into the depths of her underwater kingdom; as such, both Ravel and Debussy create beguilingly beautiful, yet capriciously sinister, depictions of cascading water and the creatures within it." ~Daniel Schreiner