CPMF Musical Moments

On Saturday, July 13, 2019, at San Antonio's Trinity Baptist Church,
Ilya Shterenberg, clarinet and Scott Cuellar, piano transported the audience across the ocean when they performed
Jean Françaix's Tema con variazioni for clarinet and piano (1974).

French composer Jean Françaix stated that his goal as a composer was to give pleasure. Deeply influenced by French composers Emmanuel Chabrier and Francis Poulenc, his music is light-hearted and witty, full of conversational interplay between instruments.… His Tema con variazioni for clarinet and piano was written in 1974 and owes its existence to a peculiarity of the Paris Conservatoire. As part of its rigorous training program, the Paris Conservatoire requires end-of-year examinations for all its students. These examinations culminate in a public prize competition, the Concours du Conservatoire.…

In 1974, the Conservatoire approached Françaix with a commission to compose the clarinet department’s Pièce de Concours. Françaix produced his Tema con variazioni, featuring a light-hearted, perky theme with six variations. The work as a whole has a carefree spirit, and yet fulfills the central requirement, in Françaix’s words, of being “perilous to perform.” He went on to say, “fortunately, clarinet players have masochistic tendencies…. We are far from the time when Jerome K. Jerome, listening to a clarinet, wrote that it reminded him of his mother-in-law being swallowed by a shark. Nowadays clarinet players have turned into mermaids; and Odysseus’ bonds should be of steel.”