Maurice Maréchal: Brahms and Beethoven Cello Sonatas ORVII

Side 1

Brahms ‘Cello Sonata No 1 in E minor, opus 38

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Allegretto quasi Menuetto
3. Allegro

Recorded 13.10.59

Maurice Maréchal cello

Cecile Ousset piano

Side 2

Beethoven ‘Cello Sonata No 2 in G minor, opus 5 No 2

1. Adagio sostenuto – Allegro molto
2. Rondo (Allegro)

Recorded 01.01.58

Maurice Maréchal cello

Cecile Ousset piano

Maurice Maréchal was the first of a line of twentieth century French cellists that was to include such names as André Navarra, Paul Tortelier, Pierre Fournier, André Levy, Bernard Michelin, Guy Fallot, Etienne Pasquier and Paul Bazelaire. In short, as ‘the Jacques Thibaud of the cello’, and the only contemporary one dared to compare to Casals, he instigated what is now referred to as the ‘French Cello School’.

Born in Dijon in 1892 he was quick to take to the cello and studied under a Monsieur Agnellet at the Dijon Conservatoire. His progress was swift and by the age of ten he was already giving recitals locally. A notice from 1903 read: ‘Despite his age, Maurice Maréchal already handles the cello as few professional players do. He has the temperament of a genuine artist. We would be very surprised if he didn’t become a great soloist.’ Graduating from Dijon in 1906, he gave a series of concerts the following summer: ‘It is rare to see such a daring performer who plays the melodic line with such feeling and such life. This student already has almost nothing more to learn from his teacher.’

His studies continued at the Paris Conservatoire in Loeb’s cello class, taking composition with Paul Dukas, and chamber music. In 1911 he finally gained his ‘Premier Prix, premier nommé’. Such was the recognition of his talent that only a few months later he was appointed cello soloist with the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux. He championed the concertos of Lalo and Saint-Saens, and performed regularly. His unique sound, - warm, dark and powerful - became progressively famous in concert halls across Europe. Touring Holland in the summer of 1914, he could not know that the concert of July 8th would be his last for five long years. At the outbreak of war, Maréchal was immediately mobilised into the infantry.

For nearly four years he shared the appalling existence of the ‘Poilus’, the French soldiers, in the trenches. He wrote: ‘I am not a coward, but when I think that my whole future might be ruined by a stupid bullet that would not prove anything in either terms of force or terms of right, and that the whole structure built on my poor little mother’s many sacrifices could fall, I get caught by such a trembling of anxiety it contorts me.’

By chance, one of his companions in this hell was a carpenter who produced for Maréchal a makeshift cello so he could play from time to time. He would later refer to this instrument as his ‘War Bass’. Another of his companions was the composer and pianist André Caplet. Together with two other friends they gave regular chamber music recitals for General Mangin and his staff. These special moments of music and fraternity offered welcome relief during these terrible years. In 1917 Maréchal met Debussy. With Caplet he played for the composer what was probably only the second performance of his cello sonata, thus learning Debussy’s precise intentions. In gratitude and admiration Debussy dedicated the score to Maréchal.

At war’s end Maréchal was hospitalised and finally demobilised in April 1919. On July 6th, back in Dijon, he performed a Haydn concerto and Magnard’s ‘Funébre’. From that moment nothing would stop him. After five years of the horrors of war and artistic frustration, his passion for playing could no longer be restrained. However, it was not long before another passion entered his life.

At a French-American charity concert he met a beautiful young woman called Lois Perkins. When she had to return home to America they wrote to each other constantly. Maréchal didn’t think twice about selling his cello to pay for the voyage to see her again. They married in 1921 - the groom was late, delayed by a rehearsal. The couple were to have two children, a son and a daughter.

Throughout the Twenties his reputation grew, but he was unwilling to be simply a virtuoso. He believed the duty of an artist is to serve the composers of his own time. No other cellist has championed so many contemporary works, many of them major examples of 20th century cello repertoire. In April 1922, with Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, he gave the world premier of a masterpiece - Ravel’s Duo for Violin and Cello. The critics agreed that the success of the concert owed much to the magnificent performances of both artists. In December of the following year he premiered Caplet’s ‘Epiphanie’, one of the most difficult works in the literature for cello and orchestra. He never hesitated to perform works by unknown composers: Joseph Boulnois (sonata with Casadesus), Geisler, Louis Dumas, Sjögen, various works by his friend the conductor Philippe Gaubert, Simon Laks (Sonata with Perlemuter), André Bloch, Boellman. Robert Casadesus, Jean Doyen, Marcel Ciampi and Yves Nat were regular chamber music partners and he also had occasion to play with Cortot, Thibaud, Youra Guller and Jeanne Gautier.

During the 1926-27 season he made his debut on the American concert circuit. The critics were unanimous in their praise. ‘Maréchal has tone, technique, style and that indefinable attribute of the finest artists which can be classed under the general term of genius’. ‘Maréchal triumphs in recital … a new cellist of the first rank has come to town … with rare beauty of tone, imagination, and poetic insight, Maréchal made the Debussy Sonata sound better than I ever heard it. He has technical mastery and a tone of unusual quality, but the principal so marking him are the temperament and poetic warmth of his playing’. ‘If there is a better cellist than Maurice Maréchal then I do not know him. Maréchal is like Casals, a Superman of the cello.’

His success was so great that he returned for the next three seasons, introducing the American audience to such new works as Tansman’s Sonata and André Bloch’s ‘Dwelling of Eternity’. He gave the world premier of Honegger’s Cello Concerto in Boston under Koussevitzky in February 1930.

In Europe, recitals, concerts, new creations continued without break. In Berlin he received a letter from Emmanuel Feuermann telling him that he had advised his students to attend his concerts to learn. He played trios by Schumann, Lalo and Ravel with Lazare-Levy and the violinist Webster. During the summer of 1932 he recorded the Lalo with his old friend Gaubert in Paris. It was a particularly hot day and they had to take the Finale at an unusually fast pace as the technicians had explained that the wax masters were going soft in the heat! In 1933 there was the creation of Pierre-Octave Ferroud’s beautiful sonata with Casadesus. In 1935 his touring took him ‘straight to the hearts of the Viennese public’, to London where ‘His first recital showed us the reason for his reputation’, to Moscow where ‘the audience were prey to a veritable delirium of enthusiasm’. In the same year he premiered two more major works: in May, Jean Françaix’s Fantasie for Cello and Orchestra with the Paris Symphony Orchestra under Monteux, and in June, Darius Milhaud’s Concerto. Again, the critics understood the success of the new work was inseparable from the performer. Jean Ibert wrote: ‘The work is a perfect achievement and moreover it’s remarkably written for the instrument...Maréchal played it perfectly.’ Paul Le Flem: ‘Played by Maréchal the Concerto was sure to be a success. The warm sound of the soloist fills the music with warmth and sincerity. Maréchal knows how to enrich the music he is serving. With this poet of sound, style and virtuosity become as one.’

Between September and November 1936 a long tour took him from Russia to the Far East. He was the first French cellist to play there and he appeared in Shanghai, Saigon, Singapore, Java and Japan. During his stay in Japan he recorded several 78s mostly devoted to Japanese melodies! Despite the frenzied pace of the tour, he was never tired, always curious of the culture, its customs and exotic cuisine.

The outbreak of the Second World War spelled the end of his worldwide tours. Needless to say, he would not perform in Germany during the war. In December ’42 he accepted a teaching post at the Paris Conservatoire on the death of Professor Hekking. Teaching was to take on a special place in this life. But he was never to be just a teacher. In the hard days of occupation he would arrive at his classes with his bag full to bursting – not with scores, but with sandwiches for his starving students. He was an attentive teacher who required hard work in return - while he could understand a technical weakness, he wouldn’t accept a lifeless performance.

By the fifties he had to reduce the frequency of concerts due to a muscular problem in his right shoulder. Perhaps his last important premier was Durey’s Fantaisie Concertante for Cello and Orchestra in 1956. Incredibly, except for two 78rpm reissues he made only two LPs. While one of these features an earlier recording of the Brahms first Cello Sonata, Maréchal never recorded Beethoven’s Sonata G minor for a record company.

Having retired from teaching in 1963, he died the following year.

In order to understand Maréchal’s art it is necessary to understand the man he was – a Frenchman, above all a Burgundian, a warm-hearted man of the earth who loved his native soil, who loved cooking, who would proudly offer his own wine to guests. He played as he lived – with fullness and passion. The barely restrained power, undeniably masculine and unashamedly romantic, the depth of his colours, the lyrical gentility of his bowing, his boundless energy, his curiosity, his humanity - all these qualities made Maurice Maréchal one of the most genuine and inspirational masters of the cello.

© Jean-Marc Harari/Glenn Armstrong 2003