Nadia Boulanger, Debussy, and Brahms in Rolling Hills

REVIEW

Clive Greensmith and Steven Vanhauwaert, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER

The first in the fall season of Classical Crossroads' “Second Sundays at Two” series, showcasing cellist Clive Greensmith and pianist Steven Vanhauwaert, began with a superb performance of Trois Pièces (Three pieces) by Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), the French composer, pianist, organist, first female conductor of major orchestras in Europe and America (where she also lectured at prestigious music conservatories), and arguably, the most important music teacher of the 20th century.

The young Nadia Boulanger, c.1910.

The Trois Pièces were originally composed for the organ in 1911 (as Trois Improvisations: Prélude, Petit Canon, and Improvisation), and later reworked by Boulanger herself for cello and piano in 1914. These three brief character pieces were played by Greensmith and Vanhauwaert with technical virtuosity and exquisite lyricism.

The first, Modéré (moderate) is ethereal, dreamy, and highly impressionistic, deeply reminiscent of Debussy, and featuring a beautiful, long, floating cello line over atmospheric shimmering piano textures. Since the cello must play con sordino (muted) both players need to lock into a perfect, hushed dynamic balance so that the piano doesn't drown out the muted cello.

Nadia in her Paris apartment, 1966.

The second, Sans vitesse et à l'aise (without speed and at ease) is as peaceful as a gentle folk-song lullaby. The transparency between the two instruments is a hallmark of the lyrical economy of Gabriel Fauré, Boulanger's professor at the Paris Conservatory. She uses a gorgeous, tight musical canon with the cello introducing a brief melody and the piano copying it a beat later, creating a clever and satisfying conversational effect. Greensmith's and Vanhauwaert's intonation and rhythmic precision were flawless.

The third piece, Vite et nerveusement rythmé (fast and nervously rhythmic), is a highly energetic dance with a Spanish flair, providing a thrilling, fiery finish filled with punchy rhythms and heated dialogue between the two instruments. Greensmith’s cello negotiated sudden wide melodic leaps and frantic runs against massive, heavily rhythmic chords from Vanhauwaert. The two players coordinated masterfully throughout, especially in the brief section which shifts into an irregular 5/8 and 5/4 time signature.

I took particular note of Vanhauwaert's expert pedaling—delicate and atmospheric with, in the first piece, expert timing of the sustain pedal to let the texture shimmer and blend, and sharp articulation in the third. This was a perfectly realized performance by two consummate musicians.

Claude Debussy, painted
by Marcel Baschet, 1884.

The program continued with an excellent performance of Debussy’s Nocturne et Scherzo, L26/CD39 (L from François Lesure's 1977 catalogue, and CD for Claude Debussy in his 2001-03 revision). This is a single hybrid work rather than a two-movement piece (despite the two-part title), structured as a continuous whole in which the fast energetic opening and closing scherzo material surrounds a central, lyrical episode. 

Here, the expressive melodic lines and subtle harmonic shifts foreshadow Debussy's later coloristic writing—his signature style of Impressionism in which love of nature, symbolist poetry (which he also wrote), and the Javanese gamelan rejected the restraints of Western-oriented harmony and rigid forms for tension and resolution, in favor of unresolved dissonances—where mood, texture, and instrumental colors are prioritized, and evocative musical ideas drift in an out without a formal resolution.

Nadezhda von Meck.

Nocturne et Scherzo was originally written for piano and violin in 1882, when the 19-year-old Debussy, a student at the Paris Conservatoire, was house pianist for Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezhda von Meck (1831-94), during her household's summertime travels through Europe. The work—clearly programmed as two pieces—was premiered on May 12, 1882, at the Paris Salon Flaxland with Maurice Thieberg on violin, and Debussy on piano. Debussy later reworked it for cello and piano in the form we heard here. Unplayed after that initial performance, it was rediscovered in the late 1960s among the uncatalogued private collections of Debussy's former students and estate effects.

It was beautifully performed by Greensmith and Vanhauwaert, as in the fluid shifting between witty, perhaps flirtatious conversational statements and sudden harmonic detours; in the sudden surges of bright energy and sweeping melodic lines effortlessly passing from the piano to the cello; and in the capricious changes in key signature coming out of nowhere—all the while keeping the rhythmic momentum natural, and played with perfect precision, solid technique, and strong musical maturity: a French delight.

The concert concluded with a stunning performance of Brahms’ fiery, extroverted and monumental Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99, written in the summer of 1886 during his productive retreat at Lake Thun in Switzerland. Brahms, a child prodigy who at six invented his own system for writing musical notes before he learned standard music notations, was an accomplished pianist, and often premiered his own works. He played this sonata with cellist Robert Hausmann, to whom he dedicated the work, in a private preview in Berlin, on November 14, 1886, and in the Viennese public premiere in Vienna 10 days later.

Brahms in the 1880s.

Brahms titled the work "Sonata for Piano and Cello," signifying that the piano is not a mere accompaniment but an equal voice in a dialogue. It is notoriously challenging, due to its technical demands, thick textures, and massive emotional breadth in a volatile mix of fierce aggression, dark melancholy, and sudden tender intimacy. The instruments are pushed to their dynamic and sonic limits, and preventing them masking each other requires acute listening and the kind of chamber music maturity which Greensmith and Vanhauwaert displayed.

For many others, the cello part is daunting, but not for Greensmith: where the left hand has to navigate huge, accurate jumps across the fingerboard at high speed; in the bow strokes and difficult bariolage (rapid crossing patterns on the same notes across different strings); and where the music pushes the cello into an awkward soaring high register and deep thunderous low ones, requiring exact intonation. Greensmith also exquisitely balanced the intricate and tricky left and right hand pizzicato and tremolo effects against a heavy piano texture.

Vanhauwaert's keyboard technique and musicality in a work that often feels like a concerto were nonpareil: his sweeping arpeggios, heavy double-handed chords, and rare piano tremolos never overpowered the cello. The music is packed with metric ambiguities, including hemiolas (a rhythmic device where two measures of 3/4 are phrased to feel like three measures of 2/4 or where three beats are grouped into two larger units, without changing the time signature).

The Allegro vivace first movement—grandiose, heroic, and turbulent—is in 3/4 time, but Brahms constantly undermines this meter using hemiolas, and what makes them notably challenging in this movement is that they don't always happen in both instruments simultaneously. While the cello pulls against the meter with a broad hemiola or shifted accents, the piano is often generating cross-rhythms underneath with heavy six-note tremolos and wide triple arpeggios.

Some consider the second movement, headed Adagio affetuoso, to be Brahms' finest slow movement, with a tender singing melody contrasted by a dark dramatic middle section, and a delicate epilogue. In form it is a theme-and-variations based on the old German Minnesang, Mir ist Leide (I am sorry, or I regret it).

The Allegro passionato third movement is a stormy, demonic scherzo, considered one of the most taxing movements in the standard repertoire for both instruments. The difficulty lies in its relentless polyrhythms as Brahms pits duplets against triplets between the cello and piano, requiring flawless coordination to achieve absolute rhythmic precision during the fiery passionate momentum.

It’s an endurance test for both pianist and cellist: the former faces a barrage of heavy, syncopated chordal passages and rapid figurative work that require immense forearm and wrist stamina, while the cellist must maintain an intense, driving passionate character with constant high energy bowing and rapid string crossing to sustain a piercing forte, taxing the left hand and right arm already fatigued from the previous movements. But you would never realize this by the seemingly effortless performances of Greensmith and Vanhauwaert.

The rondo finale, Allegro molto, opens with a graceful, almost light-hearted pastoral main theme, then weaves in playful snaps and pizzicato moments, and closes with a jubilant and triumphant coda in the home key of F major—without any lingering tragic or dark undertones of the previous movements. Deservedly, Greensmith and Vanhauwaert received a standing ovation, and you can enjoy this stellar performance again, as I have multiple times, by viewing Jim Eninger's excellent concert video.

---ooo---

Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Reform Church, Sunday, October 11, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, Inc.; young Nadia Boulanger: artsongaugmented.org; mature Nadia: americanlibraryinparis.org; Debussy, von Meck, Brahms: Wikimedia Commons.