Vincent d'Indy - String Quartet No. 1 in D major

Composer: Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (27 March 1851 -- 2 December 1931)
Performers: Quatuor Joachim
Year of recording: 2001

String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 35, written in 1890.

00:00 - I. Lent et soutenu. Modérément animé
12:11 - II. Lent et Calme
20:47 - III. Assez modéré et dans le sentiment d'un chant populaire. Assez vite
27:36 - IV. Assez lent et librement déclamé. Vif et joyeusement animé

D'Indy fulfilled his apprenticeship through the 1870s. With the 1880s came those amazing works in which inspiration and technique strike an uninhibited balance blending charm and power, youthful élan and just proportion, beginning with the operatically ambitious cantata Le Chant de la Cloche (1879-1883), and continuing with the piano Poème des Montagnes (1881), Symphonie Cévenole (1886), and the Trio in B flat for clarinet, cello, and piano (1887) -- the latter two enjoying continuing popularity to keep his name alive outside France. With the 1890s the genuine afflatus animating earlier works thins as a preoccupation with architecture comes to the fore. Bach's counterpoint, the "cellular" technique employed occasionally in Beethoven's last quartets (dovetailing with Wagnerian leitmotive, which ultimately find their origin the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony), "cyclic" thematic recall adapted by Liszt and Franck from the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony -- and other oddments of the stupendous erudition amassed by a superbly analytical mind -- are marshaled against an inability to generate immediately compelling material. Even in the earlier work's quotation (e.g., the allusion to Weber in Poème des Montagnes) and folk song -- the Symphonie Cévenole, or Symphonie sur un chant montagnard française, is based on a shepherd's tune D'Indy heard on a hike in his beloved Cévennes -- are pressed into service. Later works (e.g., Fervaal and L'Étranger) would call upon Gregorian chant.

The manner of disguising the essentially cerebral nature of his compositional thought in glowingly effective string writing -- a salient feature of his String Quartet No. 1, composed over 1890-1891 -- would be perfected in the sensuous shimmer of his orchestral poem Istar (1896). But in the quartets his strengths and weaknesses are, sometimes cruelly, exposed. On hearing the First Quartet, his friend Fauré put the matter succinctly -- "The Andante is extremely successful. I also like the piece in the form of a folk song. But the first movement and the finale please me less: they are dry, and more interesting for their technical writing than for their ideas. The Andante, on the other hand, is full of feeling, very human." Chabrier, D'Indy's mentor and something of an older brother to him, was more appreciative -- "It is admirable! I cannot put it too strongly. I know no one, anywhere, who is capable of setting up a quartet like that! It is a delight to your friends -- not only that, but it is also an honor to your country." The Quatuor Ysaÿe gave the premiere chez Cercle XX, Brussels, on 24 February 1891.

The string quartet is dedicated: "à Eugène Ysaÿe, au quatuor Ysaÿe, Crickboom, Van Hout, Joseph Jacob".