Servais - Souvenir d'Anvers (Urtext Edition, Piano Version)

Souvenir d’Anvers was composed in the 1830s and was first performed on 3 December 1837 in Antwerp, a city Servais often visited for concerts and personal connections. The string quintet source also identifies the work as a Fantaisie, though unlike most of Servais’s souvenirs and fantasias, it does not contain a variation set.

The work survives in versions for cello with piano and string quintet accompaniment. An orchestral version once existed, but is no longer extant. Rather than a theme and variations, Souvenir d’Anvers is best understood as an adagio and allegro. It opens in F minor with a unison passage based on the Hungarian minor scale, followed by a nostalgic solo melody. A substantial cadenza connects the adagio to the allegro, a sonata-rondo with a lively C major refrain.

Several ideas in Souvenir d’Anvers reappear in later works by Servais, including Concerto Militaire, Op. 18, the Cello Concerto, Op. 5, the Grand Duo with Henry Vieuxtemps, Fantaisie La Romantique, and O cara memoria, Op. 17. The work is also unusual in Servais’s output for avoiding extended passages in octaves and thirds.

Our edition is based on the autograph cello solo and piano parts, MS 45.106 (3), and the string quintet version, MS 45.109, in the hand of Ulysse Claes. All sources are housed at the Brussels Conservatory Library. Three pages of the piano part were rejected, as they do not fit the cello part.

ASTA Level: 6