Two great interpreters, poets and lovers of the French repertory and chamber music join forces here: the violinist Tedi Papavrami and the pianist Nelson Goerner....

Two great interpreters, poets and lovers of the French repertory and chamber music join forces here: the violinist Tedi Papavrami and the pianist Nelson Goerner. They have chosen to devote this programme to the two violin sonatas of Gabriel Fauré and the Sonata of César Franck. Cesar Franck and Gabriel Faure were two of the main architects of the renaissance in French chamber music during the final decades of the nineteenth century. Both were members of the Societe Nationale de Musique they helped to found in 1871, along with Camille Saint-Saens, Romain Bussine, Henri Duparc, Jules Massenet and others. It was for this society that Faure wrote his first masterpiece, the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major. Impelled by patriotism, they jointly undertook a crusade to safeguard French music, adopting the motto Ars Gallica. At the same time, in a century largely dominated by opera, they aspired to rehabilitate the neglected genres of symphonic and chamber music, and song- the typical genres of German music. They succeeded spectacularly, and the number of major works produced in France during this period is phenomenal.

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REVIEW:

These are huge performances, of enormous intensity and sweep, and in the heat of the moment it’s hard not to be carried away. Papavrami’s playing is what you might call old-school, in the best way—ardent and rich-toned in all registers, with generous vibrato and an effortlessly fluid way of draping itself over a phrase. Goerner responds with an almost improvisatory flexibility and imagination.

– Gramophone