PROUST AND MUSIC: REAL AND IMAGINED

NOVEMBER 13, 2013 | 20th Century Theatre, London

Ebène Quartet
Ekaterina Derzhavina piano
Anton Martynov violin
Shani Diluka piano

Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore

Program
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110
Saint-Saëns Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75
Fauré Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45 (1st movement)
Debussy String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10

Marcel Proust was one of the most musically responsive of writers. Hypersensitive and hyper-fastidious, he once wrote to his friend Gabriel Fauré that he was ‘intoxicated by his music’. Fauré in turn became one of the models for the composer Vinteuil in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Yet as Proust revealed, the inspiration for the ‘petite phrase’ associated with Swann’s love for Odette in the novel was not Fauré’s, but the ‘motto’ theme that pervades Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata in D minor. Join us as we explore music associated with Proust in a programme that ranges from late Beethoven (one of the writer’s dearest loves) via the charming, rarely heard Saint-Saëns violin sonata, to the first movement of Fauré’s Piano Quartet in G minor inspired by the composer’s childhood memories (Proust would have approved), and finally, to Debussy’s revolutionary String Quartet of 1893, Proust’s favourite work by his favourite living composer.