Piano Quartet in D minor op. 15

In 1897 Charles Tournemire began work on his Piano Quartet in D minor, one of his early chamber compositions. He completed it in 1898, the year he was appointed organist of Ste Clotilde in Paris, and it was premiered in April 1899 at the Salle Pleyel, by Lucien Durosoir, violin (who had taken lessons in composition with Tournemire), Pierre Monteux, viola, Fritz Schneklüd, cello, with the composer at the piano. Tournemire dedicated his score to the violinist and conductor André Tracol (Lucien Durosoir’s violin teacher). The work was published in 1905 by Albert Noël. Tournemire’s Opus 15 is an ambitious work, in which the composer respects the traditional canons of the quartet (four movements, the first and the last in sonata form, a scherzo with a central trio, an introspective slow movement), while nevertheless leaving his own imprint – possibly influenced by the organ – in particular in the very rich textures (frequent use of double-stopping, floods of arpeggios and octaves on the piano), the superimposition of strata differentiated by their material and their writing, and polyrhythmic superimpositions. In the light and transparent Scherzo, however, staccato and pizzicato are used to give space to the instrumental combinations. Popular touches (open fifths in the bass) loosen up this movement and also the vigorous finale, with its many syncopations and shifts of accent. Tournemire marks himself out by his conception of the cyclical principle, which owes less to César Franck than to Richard Wagner: the way he transforms the unifying motif (heard in the solo for the viola in the opening bars of the work) recalls the plasticity and the treatment of the leitmotifs that characterise the works of the German composer.