On August 17, 2025 two of Florent Schmitt’s Trois rapsodies, Op. 53 – Polonaise and Viennoise – were presented in concert at Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs, Virginia by duo-pianists Genevieve Fei-wen Lee and Brian Hsu.

The performance was part of Garth Newel’s “Piano Weekend” set of two concerts featuring four pianists (Jeannette Fang and Jeremy Thompson in addition to Genevieve Lee and Brian Hsu).

The theme of the weekend’s first concert was “Send in the Clowns” and had as its centerpiece Stravinsky’s piano duet arrangement of his ballet Pétrouchka, while the second program, titled “Rhapsodic,” featured music by Liszt, Ravel and Schmitt.

The repertoire choices for the Piano Weekend concerts were the brainchild of Jeannette Fang, who since 2015 has been the pianist of the Garth Newel Piano Quartet. She is also co-artistic director of the Garth Newel Music Center.

In explaining how the “Rhapsodic” program came together, Ms. Fang commented:

“Typically, my programming strategy is to work from a theme first. Sometimes a particular piece of music will provide the theme for an entire concert, but in this case I wanted to structure the program around the concept of piano virtuosity and showmanship as manifested in rhapsodies. 

I like Florent Schmitt’s music a lot. I’ve enjoyed playing his Lied et scherzo and also his Hasards for piano quartet. Although I had known of their existence, I didn’t become acquainted with the music of the Trois rapsodies until I was putting together this program.

Obviously I felt we needed Liszt for a program featuring rhapsodies, and I also wanted to include the Ravel Rapsodie espagnole. The Schmitt rhapsodies were a great complement because, like Ravel, Schmitt was a French composer — and the two men were friends. 

Also, the two Schmitt rhapsodies we selected cover Polish and Viennese national styles, which places us in Central Europe with Liszt. So it was an apt choice to include them. Beyond that, Schmitt’s rhapsodies bring the orchestral range of the piano ensemble to our stage.”

Musicologist and critic Christopher Hill was present at the “Rhapsodic” concert which, in addition to the Schmitt, featured the two-piano version of the Liszt-Busoni Spanish Rhapsody, the Ravel Rapsodie espagnole along with Richard Kleinmichel’s 19^th century four-pianist arrangement of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 to conclude the program.

Mr. Hill’s review of the Garth Newel concert was published August 21, 2026 on the classical music website EarRelevant. In his review, Hill noted that the lack of a “robust performance tradition” for Schmitt’s music poses special challenges for interpreters, writing:

“Florent Schmitt’s Opus 53, Trois rapsodies, was without question the most technically and musically challenging work on the program. It was performed, like the Ravel, by Genevieve Lee and Brian Hsu. Given its complexities, you will not be surprised to hear that your reviewer thinks the pianists needed more time to get to know the work. The number one reason they needed more time is that Schmitt’s Opus 53, unlike the Ravel and Liszt works on the program, has no widely established performance tradition (as of 2025). 

Technically, the pianist duo was just as superb in its ensemble as it had been … in the Ravel. Further, Lee and Hsu are much too good musicians to have just played the notes; they also played the phrases very sensitively. But it seemed to this reviewer that Schmitt’s leading voices were often buried in detail, and thus that the duo didn’t know where the music was really going. As a contextual example: it was Ravel who joined Schmitt in an early performance of Opus 53. And it was not many months after doing so that Ravel sketched a piece of his own that he titled Vienne — a piece rather reminiscent of Schmitt’s progression in Opus 53 from innocent waltz to violence. 

Sixteen years later, Ravel’s sketch became La Valse – some of the best music he ever wrote. Ravel’s later score is alive with his personal insights, sharpened by front-line experience in the Great War. Nonetheless, it echoes more than a little of what Schmitt did sixteen years earlier in his Opus 53.

No doubt because Schmitt is not as well-known as Ravel today, the pianists tried to ‘sell’ his music to the audience as charming froth, and they played it accordingly. Thanks to their technical panache, their performance was warmly received. Perhaps few if any in the audience … knew what they were missing. That said, one can only applaud this duo for what was, in the event, a superior performance of a great work that lacks a performance tradition. They are helping start one — helping shape the future of classical music. Hats off to Genevieve Lee and Brian Hsu!”

The Canadian pianist Leslie de’Ath, who with fellow-pianist Anya Alexeyev made a commercial recording of the Trois rapsodies on the Dutton Epoch label in 2011, contends that Florent Schmitt’s “mastery of the unexpected” is unsurpassed in this particular composition, noting:

“Schmitt’s cornucopia of delicious musical tricks seems always to be just one step ahead of the listener, while at the same time inviting us to savor each unexpected moment.”

The Garth Newel concert was the second time that I have seen the Schmitt rhapsodies played live. My own personal view of the Lee-Hsu performance is that the two pianists brought sound artistic insights as well as precision technique to a work that is something of a challenge to bring off successfully due to its technical difficulties.

There have been just four commercial recordings made of the Trois rapsodies over the years, and although the various rhapsodies are presented in recital from time to time, I am aware of just a couple of live performances done in the United States over the past dozen years: the Invencia Piano Duo at Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia) in September 2013, plus duo-pianists Gwendoline Mok and Jeffrey LeDeur at the San Francisco International Piano Festival in September 2024.

Following the Garth Newel concert, I was able to spend a few minutes visiting with both pianists, asking them for their perspectives on the Schmitt rhapsodies and their experience in preparing the Polonaise and Viennoise for concert presentation.  Highlights of our conversation are presented below:

PLN:  When did you first become acquainted with French composer Florent Schmitt?

Genevieve Lee:  I knew the name of Florent Schmitt, but I had never heard any of his music — much less performed it — before the Trois rapsodies.

Brian Hsu:  It was the first time for me as well. This weekend was the opportunity for us to finally have a chance to play any Florent Schmitt. Like Genevieve, I’d known his name before now, but that was all.

PLN:  How did this opportunity to perform Schmitt’s Trois rapsodies come about? 

Genevieve Lee:  It was Jeannette [Fang] who came up with the program which she then presented to us.  She asked if we would be interested in performing it. My reaction was, “Cool – I’d like to try that!”

Brian Hsu:  I felt the same way – I was excited to try it.

Genevieve Lee:  I had studied in Paris for a time, and I love French music. So does Brian. It was nice to pair the Schmitt with the Ravel Rapsodie espagnole on the same program.

PLN:  Did you listen to any recordings of this music before you agreed to play it here at Garth Newel?

Genevieve Lee:  We listened to several recordings — the Casadesus, plus one other one. Our feeling was that the Casadesus recording was a little on the fast side, but it is also very exciting.

Brian Hsu:  I think the other one we listened to was the Kanazawa-Admony Piano Duo recording.

PLN:  Some music writers contend that Schmitt might have been paying homage to a specific composer in each of the three rhapsodies – Chabrier in Française, Chopin in Polonaise, and Johann Strauss in Viennoise.  Do you agree with this viewpoint?

Genevieve Lee: Regarding the Polonaise, personally I’m not hearing a lot of Chopin in the music.

Brian Hsu:  Right. It doesn’t have the characteristic rhythmic element that we usually associate with a Chopin polonaise.

Genevieve Lee:  In the Viennoise, when you finally get to the waltz tune, it’s just so much fun. You can let loose and it’s certainly Straussian. But the introduction leading up to the waltz sequence is kind of crazy.

Brian Hsu:  What I find notable in the Viennoise is the back-and-forth repartee between the two pianos.  It’s so much fun having that interplay between the two pianists – and it was something that struck me in particular when we came together to rehearse.

PLN:  How has it been to collaborate on this piece?

Genevieve Lee:  It’s been a really enjoyable experience!

Brian Hsu:  The two of us have performed extensively together in varied repertoire. The Schmitt is a good addition, and it’s certainly something that we wouldn’t mind playing again – we’d love to do it, actually.

PLN:  What were your most significant challenges with the music, in terms of any technical or interpretive aspects, when preparing for the concert?

Genevieve Lee:  It took a while to get into the musical language. Learning it was a bear, actually – even with a recording to listen to as a reference. There’s quite a lot of chromatic material in the score.

Brian Hsu: I’d say that when we were learning our parts by ourselves, the music didn’t seem to “click.” But when we got together here at Garth Newel to rehearse this week, suddenly everything came together very nicely. After the first run-through we realized, “This all makes sense now!”

Genevieve Lee:  I actually thought it was going to be hard to put our parts together, but instead it was, “Oh — not too bad!” — so we could quickly shift to working on the interpretive aspects of the music.

Brian Hsu: One technical issue that required our attention was the extensive amount of modulations – similar patterns in the music that are actually a little different from each other and require extra attention, like in black key/white key relationships. That was challenging.

Another thing that was a bit difficult, in my part at least, is that there are frequent large jumps across the keyboard at a very fast tempo that aren’t intended to be played with any rubato. That presented challenges in landing on the correct notes when there’s so little room for error.

PLN:  Now that you’ve had the opportunity to spend significant time with the score, do you feel that it deserves to be part of the core two-piano repertoire?

Genevieve Lee:  Yes. This is substantive music that reveals new insights every time we play it.

Brian Hsu:  Even today when we were doing our final run-through before the concert, we were discovering new attributes and interrelationships inside the music.

PLN:  Looking to the future, do you plan to keep this work in your active repertoire?

Genevieve Lee:  Yes, we’d certainly love to do that.

Brian Hsu:  I agree!

PLN:  As we conclude, are there any additional points you’d like to make about Florent Schmitt and the Trois rapsodies?

Genevieve Lee:  I’m happy that we were given this chance to prepare and play the rhapsodies. It also makes us curious to investigate more of Schmitt’s music for two pianists. We’ve recently learned that quite a bit of it exists!

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Here’s hoping that Genevieve Fei-wen Lee and Brian Hsu do end up exploring more of Florent Schmitt’s extensive body of work written for piano duet and duo – among them such engaging suites as Feuillets de voyage, Reflets d’Allemagne, Une Semaine du petit elfe Ferme-l’oeil and Musiques foraines.

We also hope that they will find more opportunities to present the Opus 53 Rapsodies in recital, adding the opening Française item to complete the set.

For those who are interested in viewing the Lee-Hsu performance of Rapsodie polonaise and Rapsodie viennoise, an official Garth Newel video has been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed here. (The Schmitt performance begins at approximately minute-marker 3:30.)