During the long peace before the Great War gave soldiering a bad name, le soldat de plomb (literally, lead soldier, but often translated tin soldier) enjoyed a brilliant career in children's pieces by everyone from Tchaikovsky to Gabriel Pierné. Séverac's essay differs in that it is a suite of three pieces for piano, four-hands, with the pupil gamely joining in on readily manageable parts as the teacher provides impetus and flair, showing the possibilities of larger hands, and opening a winsome door on sonorous fantasy. Séverac's tact in drawing young musicians into the world of first-rate music-making is equal, in its less extensive way, to Leopold Godowsky's, a composer who devoted a significant part of his creativity to the cultivation of pupil/teacher duet literature. A photograph of Séverac and Ricardo Viñes playing a duet on a parlor upright at Saint-Félix de Lauraguais (Haute-Garonne), Séverac's birthplace, surrounded by men, women, and children in their finery, brings back an era in which the latest musical productions were heard at the piano, often given amplitude in four-hand arrangements. Viñes and Blanche Selva gave Le Soldat de Plomb's premiere at an all-Séverac Schola Cantorum concert on March 25, 1905. Could that be the work they are performing in the photo? The provincial audience, clearly wowed by the native son and his famous Spanish friend, are rapt. Composed over 1904-1905, Séverac subtitles his Soldat de Plomb "A true story in three parts... extract from the Album for small and large children," which proves a reliable indicator of the readiness with which the composer could enter into the world of childhood and all its imaginary vistas. While there is no album of that title among Séverac's works, En Vacances -- "on vacation," a collection of eight solo pieces published in 1912 -- mines a similar vein of childhood frolics capable, in their elegant whimsy (and medium difficulty), of yielding adult satisfactions. Le Soldat de Plomb opens with a stately Sérénade interrompue as the Tin Soldier woos the China Doll, ignoring the ever more distant reveille and retreat of his unit. Quat'jours de boîte is a mock funeral march representing the Tin Soldier's imprisonment for his late return to barracks, despite its lugubriousness, attaining genuine pathos, before an impassioned appeal (quoting the Marseillaise) secures his freedom. The upshot can only be the marriage of the Tin Soldier to the China Doll, accomplished in a festive Défilé nuptial, a suitably militarily colored wedding march. If tongue-in-cheek, Séverac's music is never patronizing.

(AllMusic)

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Performer: Aldo Ciccolini
Sheet music: imslp.org/wiki/Le_soldat_de_plomb_(S%C3%A9verac%2C_D%C3%A9odat_de) (Edition Mutuelle, 1905)

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