Widor, CM :: Romance and Scherzo from the Suite op. 34

Romance and Scherzo from the Suite op. 34

Widor, CM

International Music Company presents Charles-Marie Widor's 'Romance and Scherzo' from the Suite op. 34 for flute and piano edited by John Wummer.

'Charles-Marie Widor, most famous for his organ music and as organist of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris, was a professor of composition as well as of organ at the Paris Conservatory and did write music other than organ music. [The] Suite is a substantial work in four movements, 17 minutes in length. It has the size and nearly the sense of substance of a sonata, but the composer withheld that name, probably because it lacks a formal sonata-allegro movement with development to open it. The work was composed for Paul Taffanel (1844 - 1908), a fellow professor at the Conservatory and the originator of a new technique of flute playing that revolutionized music for the instrument and made France the center of the world as far as that instrument was concerned. It is because of Taffanel that the flute is so prominent in French music in the years leading up to World War I and even afterwards. The idiom of Widor's suite is conservative. Although it would be too much to expect the average composer to have adopted any of the new ideas Claude Debussy had been trying for the past decade since the composition of 'Afternoon of a Faun', it is surprising that the style of this piece is pre-Wagnerian. The second movement, Scherzo: Allegro vivace, is a very deft, leaping piece with a nearly breathless pace. The audience and the flutist are given something of a respite with a trio (central section) in a slower tempo. The lyrical heart of the Suite is the Romance: Andantino. It is warmly emotional. Some commentators have found this movement touching in a manner reminiscent of the music of Robert Schumann. It reverses the layout of the Scherzo, with a stormy middle section contrasting with the lyricism that surrounds it.'

- Joseph Stevenson