Classical Music

Fauré: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2

Classical Music

Classical Music

Continuing their ongoing series with Resonus Classics, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men & Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor John Scott release a compelling and powerful recording of choral works by French composer Gabriel Fauré, including his iconic Op. 48 Requiem. Featuring the version accompanied by chamber orchestra and organ, the choir and Scott are joined for Fauré’s best-known work by the excellent New York-based Orchestra of St Luke’s. Also featured on this recording are a selection of shorter works including the celebrated Cantique de Jean Racine and the striking Messe Basse for upper voices.

The appearance of Faur�'s Requiem in the 1880s, a decade during which the composer's most successful compositions were songs and piano pieces, can on I y be explained by the fine choral music which preceded it. The Messe basse represents Faur� at his most practical. Written in conjunction with the French composer and organist Andr� Messager (also at one time assistant to Widor at St Sulpice) during a holiday in Normandy in 1881, the Messe basse was composed for the modest forces of a local church. A setting of the motet O salutaris hostia and the Kyrie were Messager's contribution; the remaining movements of the Ordinary, without the Credo, were set by Faur�. When revising the score in 1906 Faur� adapted the violin and harmonium accompaniment for organ, at the same time excising the Gloria and replacing Messager's Kyrie with one of his own. The final version of the Messe basse is one of the few existing settings of the mass for female voices and organ. The youthful Cantique de Jean Racine dates from 1865 when Faur� was studying with Saint-Sa�ns at the Ecole Niedermeyer in Paris. The Cantique earned Faur� a premier prix in composition and is a testament to the young composer's melodic genius and to his penchant for rich textures. This recording is an attempt to move Faur�'s liturgical music from the concert hall to the church. In particular, the reconstruction of nineteenth-century French ecclesiastical pronunciation and the restoration of Faur�'s preferred phrasing are just two of the most useful elements in the search for the composer's intentions. To those familiar with the more expansive versions of Faur�'s Requiem there will inevitably be unfamiliar textures in this performance. However, few of Faur�'s romantic gestures are lost in the chamber version, and moreover, the reserved translucence of the instrumentation emphasizes the fact that the Requiem -and indeed all the choral music recorded here - was originally designed for liturgical performance.

Gabriel Fauré’s musical language bridges a gap between the romanticism of the 19th century and the new worlds of music which appeared in the 20th, employing subtle harmonic changes and a gift for melody to combine innovation with an entirely personal idiom. His First Piano Quartet is filled with characteristic French colour and lyricism, and the Piano Trio in D minor is a late work whose musical language is familiar from his songs. Both the Pavane and the popular Sicilienne express nostalgia for earlier times, and the short Pièce has great simplicity and charm.

REVIEWS:
BBC Music (6/98, p.67) - Performance: 3 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) - "...the exquisite and atmospheric miniatures that make up the Mozariaan 'Masques et bergamasques' and the incidental music for 'Pelléas et Mélisande'....feel ever fresh....The 'Shylock' suite....contains beautiful moments and Lynda Russell's pure, light voice suits the style very well..."

Fauré’s most beloved orchestral works are presented here in sumptuous, refined and beautifully recorded performances. With charismatic interpretations of the three short works for solo instruments and a rare recording of the choral version of the famous Pavane, this is a definitive collection of Fauré’s orchestral music.

With naturalistic imaging, depth of field and dynamic range, these recordings are engineered to audiophile standards and aim to capture as realistically as possible the sound of the orchestra performing on the Benaroya Hall stage. Digital content will be available in stereo, 96k 24-bit high resolution, and 5.1 surround sound.

This is the fourth disc on the Seattle Symphony’s new in-house label, reflecting the highly acclaimed partnership between talented young French conductor Ludovic Morlot and his American orchestra.

REVIEW:

Conjuring a wonderful palette of color from the Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot manages to give his Fauré performances an unmistakably and idiomatically character from start to finish, and his subtle conducting is able to let his musicians communicate all the music’s emotions.

-- Pizzicato

Classical Music

Classical Music

Faure' two cello sonatas are compact, beautifully written works whose musical language, with it's many subtle changes of tonality and gift for melody, has been described as conveying 'the power of tranquil thought'.

Includes work(s) by Gabriel Fauré. Soloists: Christian Poltéra, Kathryn Stott, Priya Mitchell.

FAURÉ Music for Cello and Piano • Ina-Esther Joost Ben-Sasson (vc); Allan Sternfield (pn) • NAXOS 8570545 (70:06)


Sicilienne, op. 78. Sonata No. 2, op. 117. Après un rêve, op. 7/1. Elégie, op. 24. Romance, op. 69. Berceuse, op. 16. Papillon, op. 77. Sérénade, op. 98. Sonata No. 1, op. 109. Pavane, op. 50


A blurb on the back cover of this album states that “Fauré’s musical language bridged a gap between 19th-century Romanticism and the music that appeared with the new century.” Sounds like something I’ve said before, even having gone so far as to say that Fauré is the missing link between Brahms and Debussy. Whether one chooses to accept that argument or not, it cannot be denied that Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), a disciple of Saint-Saëns and an admirer of Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner, had, by the turn of the 20th century, largely fashioned a personal style based on the teachings of Gustave Lefèvre, as set forth in his book Traité d’harmonie , published in 1889. In it Lefèvre advances the idea that chords of the seventh and ninth are not dissonant, ergo, they do not require resolution; and that the third of the scale may freely alternate between major and minor within a “composite” scale that incorporates both modes. These ideas were of course embraced by the likes of Walter Piston and Roger Sessions in their own updated 20th-century treatises on harmony. And one hasn’t far to travel from the unresolved sevenths and ninths of Lefèvre and Fauré to the chromatically altered seventh, ninth, 11th, and bi-tonal chords, and the whole-tone and pentatonic scales of Debussy.


Most of the works on this disc are early to middle Fauré, and thus closer in content and style to the romantic aesthetic than they are to the composer’s later efforts. And three of the pieces are arrangements of works originally written for other media. The famous Après un rêve of 1870, presented here in a transcription by Pablo Casals, was conceived as a mélodie for voice and piano. The 1878–79 Berceuse was a violin and piano piece. And the ubiquitous 1887 Pavane , given here in an arrangement by Henri Büsser, was an orchestral work with choral parts later added.


Placing the remaining numbers, originally for cello, in chronological order, we have the Elégie (1883), the Romance (1894), Papillon (1894), Sicilienne (1898), the Sérénade (1908), the First Sonata (1917), and the Second Sonata (1921). While Fauré’s output did not cease in the decade between the 1898 Sicilienne and the 1908 Sérénade , it’s interesting to note that his 1898 incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande was quite possibly his final doffing of his 19th-century Romantic hat. There’s no questioning that the next few years were a time of reexamination for Fauré. Surely, he must have heard Debussy’s opera based on the same play that was premiered in 1902, and possibly even Schoenberg’s exactly contemporaneous tone poem on the subject. And though I doubt that Sibelius would have been known in France at this early date, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Fauré may even have heard the Finnish composer’s 1905 incidental music of the same title. Whatever the extent of Fauré’s exposure to these various stimuli may have been, changes in his compositional style and technique become evident with his 1906 song cycle La Chanson d’Eve , op. 95.


Both of the cello sonatas belong to Fauré’s late period, the second of the two being among his last works. While still conforming to a Classical three-movement fast-slow-fast pattern, the harmonic language is now freer and the melodic treatment more fluid, giving a sense that the music is “through-composed.” With the exception of an 1888 Petite pièce in G Major, op. 49, which has been lost, the current Naxos disc, as far as I know, gives us all of Fauré’s original works for cello, plus the three aforementioned arrangements.


German-born, prize-winning cellist Ina-Esther Joost Ben-Sasson studied with Pierre Fournier and Sergiu Celibidache. She is today an Israeli citizen, and principal cellist and frequent soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Her discography, at least according to Naxos’s brief bio, includes the Bach suites for solo cello, but I was not able to find it, or any other of her recordings, listed. Allan Sternfield is a “made in the U.S.A.” product, having studied at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory of Music. He was subsequently coached by Leon Fleisher and Wilhelm Kempff.


Naxos has here entered into competition with itself, for another fine release on the same label with Maria Kliegel and Nina Tichman, minus the Pavane , contains exactly the same program. Such duplication seems odd, especially since both discs seem to have been recorded only a year and a half apart. The current Joost/Sternfield CD, just released, was recorded mid 2007; the Kliegel/Tichman, released in 2008, was recorded late in 2005. It’s a head-scratcher to be sure. Be that as it may, a comparison between the two reveals little difference, certainly not enough to warrant purchasing Joost/Sternfield if you already have Kliegel/Tichman. J&S offer an extra with the inclusion of the Pavane , a piece you’re already bound to have in its original orchestral version. In general, though not in every single case, J&S are a bit slower in their tempo choices than K&T in the short pieces, and considerably so in the two sonatas. This may impart a somewhat more nostalgic feeling to J&S’s readings, which can, at times, suggest a salon atmosphere. But in terms of technical execution, tone production, and intonation, I would be happy with either recording.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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.