French music specialist, Jean-Luc Tingaud, conducts a selection of Faure's secular choral and theatrical music - works that remain relatively little known. Setting a text by Victor Hugo, Les Djinns is heard in Faure's version for choir and orchestra, while his first venture into incidental music, Caligula, focuses largely on the lives of the women in the Roman court rather than the Emperor. Featuring both instrumental and vocal movements, Masques et bergamasques evokes the Arcadian allure of the French f�te galante style - antique, luminous and nostalgic. Also included is the premiere recording of Desire-emile Inghelbrecht's inventive and sympathetic arrangement of Faure's largest piano work, the Theme et variations.

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.