SONATA in C# minor

Fernande Breilh (her maiden name) joined the Toulouse Conservatory at the age of 8 and had won a number of music prizes when she left to enter the Paris Conservatory in 1918, particularly to study harmony under Xavier Leroux. This lead to her appointment as teaching assistant of the harmony class and her contribution to the training of a number of successful composers, including seven winners of the Prix de Rome, and Olivier Messiaen. She married bass player and saxophonist Maurice Decruck in 1924, by which time she was learning the organ and later established a reputation as an outstanding improviser. This lead to a performing tour of the USA and a stay there until Fernande returned to Paris in 1933. Alone with her three children, she moved back to Toulouse in 1937 and a professorship at the conservatory, but gave that up in favour of full time composing from 1942. Following divorce in 1950 and financial difficulty, Fernande Decruck returned to teaching at the Fontainebleau Conservatory and died in 1954 as a result of a stroke.

The four movement Sonata in C# minor of 1943 is probably the best known of Decruck's forty or so compositions for saxophone, although there is also a solo part for viola and an orchestral accompaniment, which is seldom performed. It was dedicated to the world renowned virtuoso saxophonist Marcel Mule who was sufficiently impressed with the third movement 'Fileuse' to record it. The sonata form first movement has a mysterious beginning in the accompaniment which develops into a pastoral dialogue between soloist and accompaniment. The traditionally slow second movement - 'Noel', refers to the French carol ' Noel Nouvelet' but despite this, is imbued with a sense of melancholy. In place of the third movement Scherzo comes 'Fileuse' ('Spinning Song') which features the soloist in five sections of virtuoso passage work relieved at intervals by more thoughtful music marked 'espressivo'. The finale is in two parts - a mysterious Nocturne which suggests a funeral march followed by a Rondel which closes the work in an heroic style.

• Tres modere, expressif
• Noel
• Fileuse
• Nocturne & Rondel

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