Music by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-George, has received a strong revival in the past decade. A new album from Romuald Grimbert-Barré combines concertos of Saint-George with a new work by Thierry Pécou illustrating aspects of the earlier composer's dramatic life during the royal and revolutionary eras in France, and his Caribbean heritage. KBACH's Michael Keelan talked with Grimbert-Barré.
Details available at the Aparté Music website.
Photo credit: Marc de Pierrefeu.
Michael Keelan: I'm Michael Keelan, and this is KBACH’s First Take. I'm talking with violinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré about his new album of Chevalier de Saint-Georges's violin concertos, as well as a new concerto written specifically for him. Thanks for talking with us today.
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: Hello, thank you for having me.
Michael Keelan: Saint-Georges is not really a neglected composer anymore, but his time and place are neglected. We don't usually play music from pre-revolutionary France. Uh, what all have you played of his?
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: Well, you know, I've been playing Saint-Georges since my childhood. I mean, my mother is from Guadeloupe, so the same island where Saint-Georges was born. So it felt very natural to play his music as a violinist because I mean, Saint-Georges was a composer, but his main instrument was violin, and you can tell from the way he composed. I mean, the violin always shines and is very virtuoso. So since my teenage years, I, yeah, have been playing, I mean, first, I played actually his quartets with my family because, I mean, I come from a musical family. And so I performed many of his quartets in Guadeloupe, and that was actually a very special uh trip, the first time I did that when I was 15 because it was so, a discovery of Guadeloupe because I hadn't been there since my uh, you know, since I was 3 years old by then. And um, and it was so, first trip to my mother's island, and it was also the first time performing Saint-Georges and with my family. And since then, it’s been, his music has been part of my life. I studied actually 5 years in the US, and over there, I discovered his violin concertos. And I wrote a paper about uh, two of his concertos. And since then, I regularly performed his concertos, also violin sonatas, even his duets for two violins. So that's why it somehow felt natural to record some of these works. But the trigger actually came for this album when I talked about it with uh the composer Thierry Pécou because I've been playing a lot of Thierry Pécou's works in the past 5 years because he has a special ensemble he created. And uh, I've been the violinist of that ensemble and um, so I asked him what he thought of the idea of composing a piece in homage uh in tribute to Saint-Georges, and he liked the idea, and and um, and so thanks to to that [laughter] answer, I, I was able to convince uh the Orchestre National de Cannes, so the Cannes Orchestra, to record with us, and uh and everything just happened naturally. Uh, but it's an album I've been working on for the past 3 years. So it's really something special to have it released uh finally, and there are also a couple of performances coming up with uh the Orchestre National de Cannes, so the orchestra that recorded it, and also another orchestra in Paris, so I'm really excited about it.
Michael Keelan: So the album contains two concertos of Saint-Georges and this new concerto by Pécou. It's very rare to have a concerto that's about another composer. There are some programmatic elements that refer to the life of Saint-Georges. What are those?
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: Yeah, I, I like very much how Thierry Pécou, in a subtle way, quoted a few of uh Saint-Georges' concertos, especially in the third movement of of the concerto he wrote. You can hear some of the violin part from his concerto Opus 5, which is also in the album. But he does it, he does it in such a subtle way that you, you just hear, I mean, the violin voice in, in a high register, but the orchestra plays something that's totally, of course, different from Saint-Georges' music. That's, uh, much more modern. And he found a way also to pay tribute to Saint-Georges also in the first movement, I mean, because the first movement is mostly about Saint-Georges as a fencer because he was, apparently, an amazing fencer. And he called it "Rixes," which means "fights," basically, in French. And so you can really hear some sword fights in some passages of the first movement, and and it starts in a very calm way, but throughout the movement becomes more and more exciting, and you can hear a real battle towards the end. And the second movement, he describes music, I mean, the traditional Caribbean music called Gwoka. Gwoka is a musical style still performed in Guadeloupe, which is a dancing style of music, and so the whole movement is about the Guadeloupean roots of Saint-Georges.
Michael Keelan: And the last movement has a title too, right?
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: Exactly, the last movement's called "Revolutions." So you can, of course, think of the French Revolution that Saint-Georges contributed to, but according to what Thierry Pécou told me, it's about how revolutionary his life has been [laughter] in a way. When you listen to it, you can imagine, I mean, it's the movement that sounds the, the, the most dramatic and also the most lyrical, especially in the violin part. So you can also imagine the end of Saint-Georges' life, which is actually pretty sad because he, I mean, he went to jail, he lived in poverty towards the end of his life, and uh, so you can hear, it finishes in a very subtle way and dramatic. And so it's pretty special to finish a concerto in such a manner.
Michael Keelan: Right, he had a very dramatic biography with ups and downs, many of them related to the political situation in France, as you referred to there, and also his sword fighting, for which he was just as well known as his violin playing. So quite a character. Is there more yet descriptively in the score of the Pécou concerto? Is it sort of like Vivaldi's Four Seasons where it's very specifically marked, almost line-by-line what's going on, or is it just those movement titles?
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: I mean, there's a lot you could describe, but it's done in such a subtle way that I wouldn't be able to compare it to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I mean, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, uh yeah, it's so clear in the different aspects he wanted the audience to, to hear. The funny thing is that there are actually two versions of the concerto. He wrote a string orchestra version because at first, I didn't think we would have a symphonic orchestra for the recording. But then, when we found out that we had the full Cannes National Orchestra, then he decided to add more instruments. So the version that's in the album is the symphonic version. But in the first place, yeah, there is a more intimate version that he wrote.
Michael Keelan: It's a striking pairing of concertos by Saint-Georges with Thierry Pécou. My guest is Romuald Grimbert-Barré. Thanks very much for talking with us on First Take today.
Romuald Grimbert-Barré: Thank you so much for having me.