Jean-Philippe Collard is an admirable pianist and a formidable musician who fully understands this elusive but rewarding French composer, so that these two mid-price discs from EMI France are more than welcome. He recorded the 13 Barcarolles near the beginning of his career, way back in 1970, and the rather enclosed-seeming sound is not quite up to the best modern standards. However, the quality remains perfectly agreeable, save perhaps in some bigger passages, say, in the first of the Impromptus where I feel the microphones to be too close (like RL in his 1987 review, I also notice a slight change of sound image after the Sixth Barcarolle). I like Collard's sense of tone and texture; and his phrasing, pedalling and rubato are no less praiseworthy, so that the music emerges finely shaped and sensitive without ever becoming precious. In fact, this is Faure playing which encompasses all the moods of this sometimes understated but in fact deceptively varied music: as performed here, each Barcarolle inhabits its own world, whereas with lesser artists they can seem rather similar, particularly as the very name 'barcarolle' imposes a gently lilting style upon the composer in a way that, 'prelude', for instance, does not.
Perhaps it is because I have often heard such artists that I have occasionally found Faure a bit pallid compared to the great personalities of music such as Beethoven and Verdi or his compatriot Berlioz (indeed, no one exemplifies so-called English reserve and understatement so much as Faure), but good performances of his work such as these pieces rightly show us that there is passion as well as poetry beneath its graceful surface. If you can, try Barcarolle No. 10 in A minor—which also happens to be the shortest—for a sample of Faure at his most telling, and the G minor which follows is pretty good, too. In No. 12 in E flat major, Collard seems to me to have found exactly the right balance between sturdiness and graceful lyricism. Incidentally, these 13 Barcarolles were not written as a set, but separately over a period of some four decades.
After the Barcarolles come a number of other genre pieces that were more recently recorded and sound well, including a pleasingly fresh performance of the Dolly Suite and the refreshingly naughty Wagnerian pot-pourri entitled Souvenir de Bayreuth in which Collard is joined by Bruno Rigutto. Maybe I should try to banish the irreverent thought that some of these solo pieces are rather too like the Barcarolles, and that the the two fugues in the Huit pieces breves are just drily academic! The fifth of the Impromptus (in F sharp minor) is a remarkable piece harmonically, and the first of the four Valses-caprices develops real elan as well. The brief Romance sans paroles No. 3 in A flat major is a favourite of mine: gently flowing and songful music that could have been written by no other composer. Note that this valuable collection does not have all Faure's piano music, but in the meantime we may welcome it warmly and without hesitation.'