Helicon at The Morgan, October 4, 2011 at 6:30

The Morgan Library & Museum presents Helicon in Concert

"Réalités Invisibles" Music from the Life of Marcel Proust

TUE • 4 OCT 11 • 7:30

For tickets and information please visit

www.helicon.org/morgan

Symposium LXXXII
13 May 2007
“The Music of Proust’s Salon”

•

Jennifer Frautschi & Serena Canin, violins
Hsin-Yun Huang, viola
Ed Arron, ’cello
Pedja Muzijevic, piano

with

Richard Howard, poet & reader

•

It is no surprise that Marcel Proust—an author so concerned with memory and time—was a dedicated lover of music, the invisible art that exists only in the passage of time. Our 82nd Symposium features music important in Proust’s life and work. We open with piano pieces by Proust’s lover, Reynaldo Hahn. His is quintessential salon music, charming, nostalgic, and utterly French. Jennifer Frautschi then joins Pedja for Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata No. 1. Hahn’s diaries reveal that the reoccurring melody in this piece inspired the famous “little phrase” that represents Swan’s love for Odette in “A la recherche du temps perdu.” Proust wrote that his primary “spiritual nourishment” came from the music of Beethoven and Franck. Famously, he would round up certain Parisian musicians for private, post-midnight performances Franck’s music. To close our 22nd season (well before midnight) we’ve rounded up musicians of our own to play Franck’s opulent Piano Quintet. It should be night to remember.

Program

I. PROUST IN LOVE — Marcel & Reynaldo
“One is always inspired when speaking of what one loves.
The truth is that one should never speak of anything else.”
Letter from Proust to Hahn

Marcel Proust: poems from
"Portraits of Painters, Portraits of Musicians" (1896)
translated and read by Richard Howard

Reynaldo Hahn: Premières valses pour piano (1898)

II. THE LITTLE PHRASE — Swann & Odette
“. . . the little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak,
the national anthem of their love.”
from Swann’s Way

Passage from Swann’s Way
“In Search of Lost Time” Vol. 1, chapter "Swann in Love"
translated and read by Richard Howard

Camille Saint-Saëns
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 75 (1885)

III. SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT — Proust & Music
“For some years Beethoven’s last quartets and the music of Franck
has been my principal spiritual nourishment”
Proust to Mme. Albert Hecht, March 1916

César Franck
Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 7 (1878-79)

THE HELICON FOUNDATION
James Roe, Artistic Director
William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder