Presents

César Cui

Soundbites Badinage Berceuse Scherzinoo Nocturne Valse

Five Petite Pieces for Flute, Violin and Piano, Op.56

The Five Petite Pieces of Flute, Violin and Piano were composed in 1897 and dedicated to Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the younger brother and sister of the Tsar, Nicholas Romanov. For reasons unknown, they were originally published as 5 Duos, which of course makes no sense when you hear the music for they are clearly full fledged trios. The work could just as easily have been called 5 character pieces for that is what they are, each with a different mood. The five are Badinage, Berceuse, Scherzino, Nocturne and Valse.

César Cui (1835-1918) was born in the then Russian (now Lithuanian) city of Vilnius also known as Vilna. His father was French, his mother Lithuanian. When he was 16, his parents sent him to St. Petersburg to take a degree in engineering. Subsequently, he began a career as a military engineer and eventually became an expert on military fortifications. His expertise was such that he ended his career as a general and for many years was a professor of this subject, writing several important works. Nonetheless, Cui today is only known as a composer. As a boy, he was given piano lessons and studied with the then prominent Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko before leaving for St. Petersburg. Like his better known contemporary, Alexander Borodin who was a chemist, Cui despite pursuing an active military and academic career, nonetheless, composed throughout his life and was actually a rather prolific composer. In addition to this, he was a prominent music critic. As a critic his goal was to promote the music of contemporary Russian composers, especially the works of the composers who eventually became known as The Mighty Five. (Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin, Cui, Balakiev and Mussorgsky) Cui concentrated his efforts on opera and vocal works and did not write symphonies, although he did write a few orchestral works. He did not ignore chamber music, writing three string quartets. Outside Russia, his reputation rests almost entirely on a short, evocative work he wrote for violin and piano, Orientale.

This is a wonderful work for this ensemble from the Russian Romantic period. It is certainly suitable for concert and can also be warmly recommend to home music makers as well.