This anticipated release is the first volume in a new series devoted to the music of Gabriel Faure, which is spearheaded by Louis Lortie. Lortie states in the booklet notes: “this album purposely travels through Faure’s various creative periods, from easily appealing early pieces such as the Pavane and the melodie “Apres un reve” through to the late and unjustly neglected Preludes, a masterpiece of condensed harmonic and melodic audacity.” Lortie’s previous series dedicated to Chopin has garnered critical praise. BBC Music called the series “an exceptionally high order of playing.” The same kind of praise is expected for this new series. French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie tours extensively across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has won widespread acclaim for his Chopin and Ravel interpretations, and has performed all five Beethoven concertos and all of the Mozart concertos. The London Times described his playing as “ever immaculate, ever imaginative.”

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REVIEW:

Lortie understands the type of discretion needed to make this music sing, knows the veiled colours it requires, and has the sort of technique to project Fauré’s signature elusiveness. Above all, he identifies fully with Fauré’s chromaticism and understands its use to create space and light.

– ClassicalSource.com

Gabriel Faure has frequently been termed “the father of Impressionism.” Why this is so rendered very apparent on this state-of-the-art album featuring interpretations of his two Piano Quartets by the superb Mozart Piano Quartet. With great virtuosity, a fine sense of sound, and an intelligent command of the complex overall structure, the four instrumentalists brighten the performance skies with their musical fireworks. The Parisian music world of Faure’s time was characterized by emancipation from Germany hegemony in chamber music after the traumatic outcome of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and by the beginnings of an original French musical language beyond the opera. Faure’s quartets draw formally on the tradition- and yet breathe a new spirit: church modes and whole-tone scales mark so many a motif, and here and there, along with the “classical” development of the themes, we also encounter entirely new harmonic fields and soundscapes. For instance, the beginning of the Adagio in op. 45 already suggests Ravel’s “La vallee des cloches” from the Miroirs: like a memory, distant bells ring in the piano part, over which the very lonely viola gives its all in a pastoral song of lament- enchanting! The two slow movements belong to the absolute highlights on this release.

Classical Music

Recording Ravel's piano music for Piano Classics, the pianist Fran�ois Dumont won glowing reviews for performances to the manner born. 'There is much to envy and admire in Dumont's lucid and refined performances. He is ideally sensitive and accurate in 'Le gibet' (Gaspard) in a manner that would surely have won Ravel's admiration. Cool, elegant and affectionate... you will never catch him playing for effect, always respecting the composer's wish that his music should be played rather than interpreted.' (Gramophone) Dumont now brings his polished technique and refined musicianship to bear on music less frequently encountered in the concert hall but no less sophisticated, and often imbued with the most profound melancholy, the Nocturnes of Faur�. A previous set of the Chopin nocturnes also won golden opinions for Dumont's exquisite touch - the French high-fidelity magazine On-Top Audio rated it among the finest cycles on record - but Faur�'s universe is, if anything, even more private, more overtly expressive than Ravel's watchmaker delight in textures, yet flowing with undercurrents of troubled modernity. Composed over almost half a century, one by one unlike Chopin's sets, Faur�'s Nocturnes display the composer's style in evolution, from the apparent spontaneity and relatively carefree tone-pictures of the early pieces to the unfathomable interior world of the late works. Faur� himself had no special attachment to the genre, nor was he especially concerned to paint night-time moods and scenes. Rather, he poured into the genre many of his own private concerns and passions as a composer, experimenting time and again with syncopated rhythms and with luminous harmonies in order to create a mood of serenity and nostalgia that is uniquely his own. Dumont's new recording is accompanied by a personal essay from the pianist in which we gain valuable insight into each Nocturne from the perspective of a performer immersed in the idiom. On this recording he plays a Gaveau piano from 1922.

Pianist Malcolm Martineau brings together some of the UK’s finest singers for the third release in his series charting the complete songs of French composer Gabriel Faure´. This series follows Martineau’s well-received 5-album series of the Complete Songs of Francis Poulenc. Recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation, Malcolm Martineau has worked with many of the world’s greatest singers. He has presented his own series at the Wigmore Hall, and at the Edinburgh Festival. He has appeared throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and at major European festivals. The Sunday Telegraph boasted of his “Outstanding musical intelligence and virtuosity,” while BBC Music Magazine stated, “…Pianist Malcolm Martineau is superb, technically immaculate and consistently imaginative.”

Tirimo is a fine pianist with first-rate technical command, and understands Debussy's world well. (Gramophone). "Probably first choice for those wanting a modern digital recording offering the complete set... recording most realistic and natural." (Penguin Guide). "A most enjoyable recital, and one for which listeners will be grateful... What is Impressive is the pianist's integration of fragility and firmness, simplicity and complexity." (Gramophone). "I'm glad to be able to praise a fluid but unhurried Jeux d'eau that is well served, too, by the velvety-rich recorded sound... it 's attractive. So are the Sonatine, and the tenderly solemn Pavane pour une infante d�funte." (Gramophone). "Dickinson made Satie's music a center point of his repertoire, and his thoughtful approach to this highly rewarding music is all his own... variety of articulation and color is fully at the service of the composer." (Penguin Guide).

Classical Music

Faure: Complete Piano Quartets & Quintets / Composer: Gabriel Faur� / Performer: Jacqueline Eymar, Bernard Braunholz, Werner Neuhaus, G�nter Kehr, Number of Discs: 2 / Length: 2 Hours 3 Mins. Recordings from the sixties (1966), sounding amazingly fresh and transparent. Reissue of one of the gems from the early VOX catalogue: Faur� 's complete piano quartets and quintets played by Jacqueline Eymar! Jacqueline Eymar (1922-2008), a pupil of Yves Nat, was one of the Grand Dames of the French piano school, together with Monique de la Bruchollerie and Yvonne Lefebure. Her style is elegant, perfectly natural, "inwardly" brilliant, playing the great French and German Romantics with exquisite taste and understanding. A superb set presenting the masterworks of Faur�'s chamber music oeuvre, counting among his most frequently performed works. Faur�'s Piano Quintets are both mature masterpieces and showcase how his musical language had evolved and become more experimental. Op.89 won great admiration from it's dedicatee Eug�ne Ysa�e, who called it 'absolute music in the purest sense of the word'. Op.115, dedicated to another eminent composer, Paul Dukas, dates from 1921, three years before Faur�'s death, and could be said to represent the pinnacle of his art. Indeed, following it's premiere in Paris, one reviewer wrote 'We had expected a beautiful work, but not one as beautiful as this.'

This program spotlights Gabriel Fauré’s orchestrated songs and his music for the stage, of which his suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande includes some of his best-loved music. Performances of Fauré’s spectacular Wagnerian drama Prométhée are a real rarity, while the eloquent Shylock suite, based on Shakespeare, contains some of his most elaborate symphonic music. Fauré orchestrated only a small number of his more than 100 songs, but these include the transcendentally beautiful love song Les Roses d’Ispahan, with its harmonic subtleties and gorgeous coda.

Violinist Eva Zavaro pays heartfelt tribute to her two homelands, France and Poland, in a programme of works by Gabriel Faure and Karol Szymanowski. It's guiding thread is night, a source of inspiration to both composers, depicted in pieces that are sometimes virtuosic and impetuous, sometimes lyrical and dreamy under Eva's intense bow. She is accompanied by her longstanding musical partner, the pianist Clement Lefebvre, in this nocturnal journey which marks her first recording for La Dolce Volta.

Ever since 1995 at the latest, after the Auryn Quartet and Peter Orth released their highly acclaimed recording of Gabriel Faure's piano quintets for CPO, Primarius Matthias Lingenfelder and Peter had dreamed of recording Faure's works for violin and piano. Many years passed. In 2022, the Auryn Quartet retired from concert life. Before that, I wanted one last recording with them for TACET, no matter what, as a farewell. That didn't materialise. But Matthias still had the desire and energy. And so did Peter! So what could be more obvious than finally realising their long-cherished wish? The result is a serene, mature, virtuoso, sensitive and loving performance of this unconventionally beautiful repertoire.

The Requiem "composed for no particular purpose...", as Gabriel Faure wrote, was performed for the first time in the Madeleine Church in Paris on 16 January 1888, "for the funeral of some parishioner"! It is this original performance version, without the Offertory and the Libera me, with accompaniment provided only by a string ensemble (violas, cellos and double bass), organ and harp, that is presented here in a world premiere recording. The Messe des p�cheurs de Villerville (1881), composed in Normandy in collaboration with Andre Messager, is far removed from the solemnities of the great Parisian church; it's original version was written for women's voices with harmonium and violin accompaniment. The Choeur de Chambre de Namur invites us to return to these origins as we mark the centenary of Gabriel Faure's death in 1924.

French music specialist Jean-Luc Tingaud conducts the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in this album of favourites and rarities by Faure. Includes the first movement of the unfinished Violin Concerto, the prelude to the opera Penelope, Henri Rabaud's orchestration of the popular Dolly suite, and more.

Frensh Music For Flute And Har

Jeux d'Enfants, Ma M較e l'Oye,