Ernest Chausson developed his skill and his talent slowly. At age 25, he turned away from law to pursue music under the tutelage of César Franck, producing a limited number of compositions. The Poème was written for Chausson’s violinist friend Eugène Ysaÿe in 1896, and it reveals the composer as a gifted lyricist, a rhapsodist of impassioned refinement (or refined passion), and a craftsman of security and control. The violin part, though not without touches of bravura, is primarily the medium for melancholy musing and breathless poetic flights in the instrument’s high reaches, while the accompaniment stands back in supportive reticence.

The piece’s effect is quite magical; several years after the composer died tragically in a bicycle accident at the age of 44, his famous countryman Claude Debussy said, “The Poème contains Chausson’s best qualities. The freedom of its form never hinders harmonious proportion. Nothing touches [us] more…than the end of the Poème, where the music, leaving aside all description and anecdote, becomes the very feeling that inspired the emotion. These are very rare instances of the works of an artist.”

—Orrin Howard