The 13 Barcarolles of Fauré, composed over the course of almost four decades (1882-1921), are highly representative of his piano oeuvre and are considered his most characteristic works. They reflect his separation from the romantic idiom of Chopin and Mendelssohn, in particular, and his progress towards an independent musical language in which he achieved a successful harmonious reconciliation between tradition and the modernism that was emerging at the time. Michael Endres recorded these pieces for OehmsClassics at WDR in Cologne in May 2017. The German pianist performs worldwide as a soloist and chamber music partner. He gained a Master’s degree at the Juilliard School in New York under Jacob Lateiner and studied with Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He has won several prestigious prizes at festivals and competitions, and his discography consists of 29 albums which have also been awarded.

The superb Horszowski Trio is heard here in their debut recording. The Horszowskis (Jesse Mills, violin, Raman Ramakrishnan, cello and Rieko Aizawa, piano) draw their name from legendary pianist, Miecyslaw Horszowski, who made one of his specialties the repertoire of the three composers presented here.

This recital could almost have been entitled Around Fauré in Sixty Minutes, as the programme devised by Nicolas Stavy spans the entire career of the composer. In April 1863, when Gabriel Fauré noted down the Sonata recorded here for the first time, his 18th birthday was still a month away – the masterly Nocturne in B minor Op. 119, on the other hand, is Fauré’s final work for the piano, composed only two years before his death in 1924. Between them, and the other works included on the album, a fascinating trajectory takes shape. In the Finale of the sonata we hear a young man enjoying himself as he experiments with a Haydnesque idiom; a few years later there are traces of Mendelssohn and Schumann in 3 Romances, and of Chopin in Mazurke – also a world première recording. Especially when it comes to the choice of genre, Chopin is still an influence during the 1870s and Nocturne No. 1 and the Ballade, but both works testify to a composer finding his own voice. Fauré went on to compose another 12 nocturnes and two of these, No. 6 in D flat major from 1894 and the aforementioned Nocturne in B minor, serve as snapshots illustrating Fauré's later career and the composer's path towards increasing abstraction and a style characterised by timelessness and a detachment from fashionable trends.