AB II-27

Description

Albert Brussee
FANTASY ON THEMES FROM THE OPERA MAZEPPA
BY CLÉMENCE DE GRANDVAL

The French composer Marie Félice Clémence de Reiset, vicomtesse de Grandval (1828–1907), had piano and composition lessons in her youth from Friedrich von Flotow, the composer of the famous opera Martha. After her marriage to vicomte Charles-Grégoire de Grandval she resumed her music studies with Camille Saint-Saëns. Her first opera, Le sou de Lisle (1859), was soon followed by other music-dramatic works. Under different pseudonyms, Mme de Grandval also wrote three symphonies, shorter symphonic works, some sixty songs, a famous concerto for oboe and orchestra and – without pretending to be exhaustive – the oratorio La fille de Zaïre. The opera Mazeppa is one of her most prestigious works. It is a musical drama in five acts, on which she worked for four years.
The composer worked with a number of leitmotifs that keep recurring in certain situations, a method that points to Wagner’s influence. The main musical material is usually in the orchestra. The actors seem to ‘speak’ rather than sing, as in a recitative. Only exceptionally do arioso-like cantilenas develop. In this respect, too, the music is more indebted to Wagner with his ‘Sprechgesang’ than to Puccini, whose strength lay in the creation of the most beautiful melodies in full-blown arias. The instrumental parts, such as the ballet music from the fourth act, are therefore among the opera’s highlights. This ballet music has appeared in print in a separate orchestral score and has been performed several times in the past. The entire opera has appeared only in an edition for voice and piano (vocal score), published by Choudens in Paris.
Playing through the 307-page score, I fell under the spell of certain sections. Of the almost twenty existing Mazeppa operas, this was undoubtedly one of the best, and it would be a pity if this music were to be forever buried, gathering dust. The plan evolved to ‘do something with it’ in one way or another, to rescue the most beautiful ingredients (themes, motifs) from oblivion in the form of a fantasy for piano. Thus, during the years when I was working on Mazeppa in the Romantic Arts (from 2010 to 2014), this concert paraphrase, which was revised in 2021–22, came into being as a musical counterpart.

Style: late romantic, with occasional pre-impressionistic, Eastern influences; compare the opera Thaïs by Massenet (1894) or the Fifth Piano Concerto by Saint-Saëns (1896).

Difficulty: Grade X on a scale of I-XII.

REVIEWS
In his foreword, Brussee writes that, while playing through the score of Clémence de Grandval’s opera Mazeppa, he became charmed by this work, which he classifies as one of the best of the nearly twenty Mazeppa operas that have been handed down. To prevent this music from being lost, he made an opera paraphrase of it in the style of Franz Liszt. That is to say: not a potpourri, but a fantasy that follows the dramatic development of the opera, partly freely arranged and through-composed. […] The prelude to the keyboard piece is based on the opera’s overture, which depicts Cossack headman Mazeppa’s hellish ride, tied to his horse. This is followed by free adaptations of parts from the first three acts, including several arias and a love duet. Then comes a section with the ballet music from the fourth act (a lively mazurka and a lovely waltz). […] In the final act, we find Mazeppa back on the steppe, where he was banished by the all-powerful judge Kotsjoebej, the father of his beloved Marenka. There, Mazeppa meets her for the last time. Driven mad with grief, she no longer recognises him and dies in his arms. […] Most of the paraphrase is pianistically easy to play. […] Most of the paraphrase is pianistically comfortable to play. Going through the work as a whole, it is striking that Clémence de Grandval has indeed, as Brussee observed, written beautiful music, whose value is now accessible to the pianist.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
© 2022 AB Music Productions & Editions – The Hague.
ISBN: 978-90-830658-5-4.
Number of pages: 36, including a short preface in Dutch and English.
Currently unavailable due to the Tarwekamp tragedy.