Composer of the week : Gabriel Faure
Mon, Mar 7 2011, 11:43AM
I suppose it´s a cliche that some composers are slow to reveal their charms, but for me this is true when it comes to a lot of Faure´s music, and it more than repays the effort involved in getting to know his music better.
Some of Faure´s music can appeal straight off, the early piano music, the Requiem, most of the songs and song cycles, but it´s his later music that needs more work, but when grasped, is some of the most sublime music I know.
I´m thinking of the last song cycles, the Piano Quintets, Piano Trio, the String Quartet, and above all for me his Preludes from 1910. This last piece is one of the most beguiling and mysterious pieces of music I know. When you first hear it you think, the music sounds familiar enough, nothing strange here, but by the time it ends you think, or at least I did, what was all that about, I didn´t understand it, but there was something in it that made me want to listen to it again and again until I got a hold of it, this feeling also applies to the String Quartet.
I have been listening to both pieces for years, and I still find them endlessly rewarding and intriguing. Somebody once described the Jupiter symphony as music talking to itself, this description I feel is applicable to late Faure. This is music completely devoid of anything superfluous or overblown, it´s a paradox but it is almost as if there is no composer´s voice behind it, it just comes, hangs in the air and goes, completely naturally, this I suppose was his genius.
Most of Faure´s music is now available on Brilliant Classics box sets at their usual brilliant prices. I´ve never heard Faure´s opera Penelope, and would love to hear from anyone who has.
I hope you'll persevere with this post Durob - would cutting and pasting the text work, assuming the post goes to the right place this time?
Anyhow, Faure is an enthusiasm of mine too. The introspection is appealing, not narcissistic (it's genuine inwardness and poise, not self-regardingness, don't you feel?), as is the feeling you often get that there's a wave of passionate feeling just beneath the surface. I echo your sentiments about the chamber music and piano music, and would add to the list above the Piano Quartets (there's an excellent disc from Domus on Hyperion - ditto here the Piano Quintets) and the Nocturnes.
The Dutoit recording of Penelope on Erato sits on my shelves, bought cheaply in an HMV sale but as yet unplayed. Clearly I must get on with it!
I have the end of the String Quartet in mind as I write: the way the melody slowly and ecstatically weaves upwards towards the flight, has a final little spirited pirouette, and is gone. Marvellous stuff. It was written when Faure was effectively deaf. No Beethovenian raging here; mind you, not too much Beethovenian raging in his late quartets either!
John