Magnard Cello Sonata

[Alan Howe]

I wonder how many out there know Magnard's late Cello Sonata? I've just acquired the Hyperion recording (now offered as a CD-R to special order) and have found it to be a really profound work, its restraint being part of the secret of its profundity, I think. Not that there aren't some pretty strenuous moments, but its essence seems to me a kind of introspective lyricism of a peculiarly powerful kind. Do any others of you feel the same way about this major work?

[eschiss1]

First (... and possibly last) heard it in college (I think on a 1988 CD with Lalo's sonata from the university library, probably heard it around 1991.) Recollection mostly unclear beyond being very positive.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I am a great admirer of Magnard's Third and Fourth Symphonies, his Chant funèbre and Hymne à la Justice. I don't know his Cello Sonata yet. But your description sums up Magnard's musical character quite well. Magnard marries a Beethovenian seriousness to Gallic sensuousness.

[Alan Howe]

He's one of those composers whose sincerity of expression seems to grow on you - there's not a meretricious note in his music.

[alberto]

I first heard it about thirty years ago through a Calliope Lp. Still better IMHO the String Quartet (there is also an Apex Cd).
Fine the very "big" Violin Sonata, the Piano Trio, the Quintet for Piano and winds (all recorded more than once).
Another question from me. Who has heard some Magnard in an actual concert?
I just once heard in an actual concert the Chant Funèbre, conducted by an advocate of the unsung, Gerd Albrecht. 

[febnyc]

Profound, indeed. And quite beautiful, too.

I have it on an Auvidis CD, coupled with a work entitled "Sonata for Violin, Cello and Piano" and identified as Magnard's Opus 18.  All other references to this work list it as "Trio for Piano and Strings," or, simply, "Piano Trio."  I wonder what compelled Auvidis to cast the Opus 18 as a "Sonata?"

Anyway, this is an exquisite disc and worth seeking out.

http://www.amazon.com/Sonatas-Violin-Cello-Piano-Magnard/dp/B000003I1L/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1340714439&sr=1-3&keywords=magnard+cello+sonata

[ahinton]

Yes, I know the work and have the score; it's a fine piece indeed and as good an example as any to demonstrate that he seemed almost incapable of writing below his best. To the other recommended works in this thread I must hasten to add the string quartet. Of a generation that included Koechlin, Schmitt, d'Indy and Ravel, Magnard's relatively small but significant output shows that he can easily stand alongside any of his immediate contemporaries and compatriots.

[britishcomposer]

I too heard Chant funèbre as a teenager played by the Osnabrücker Symphonieorchester, then directed by the Swiss Jean-Francois Monnard. (His only commercial recording is the Saint-Saens cello concertos for naxos, I think.)
He was a conductor whom most of us would love to call their own: during his period with the OSO, from 1988 into the 90s, he NEVER conducted any piece twice and had at least one unsung composer or piece programmed in every concert!

[eschiss1]

Has Magnard generally had a thread in this forum? I don't want to go too far off topic of the sonata - but will try to hear it again soon (maybe Concertzender has a broadcast with a recording of it I can listen to ...)
Still... while I haven't heard any Magnard live yet, would love, I think I can say sincerely, to hear the 4th symphony in concert; I get the impression there are things in it - the opening of the main part of the first movement - that need a concert hall's presence (or a really, really good recording and sound system which I do not have) to convey. The call-to-attention (it sounds like a sort of trumpet call but apparently is distributed throughout the whole orchestra, on page 24 of the score uploaded to IMSLP) looks like that-sort-of-thing...

[alberto]

 Reading (not systematically) since several years the programs of some French symphonic and chamber institutions I see that Magnard remains quite unsung even in his own country.
As far as the Symphonies are concerned I remember that two-three years ago there was a performance of the Fourth (conductor Yean-Yves Ossonce) at the Festival Berlioz at La Cote St.Andrèe (it is Berlioz's birth village), which has imaginative programming (for instance in the next August-September Magnard Quartet, a Quartet and a Two Pianos Sonata by Th.Gouvy, Saint-Saens early Symphony  "Urbs Roma" ).

[eschiss1]

Well, since he's recorded all four of them I'd hope (though not be sure) that he'd also perform them somewhere occasionally...