Gabriel Fauré - Concertante Works (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Gabriel Fauré

1. Ballade for piano & orchestra, Op. 19
2. Berceuse for violin & orchestra, Op. 16
3. Élégie for cello & orchestra, Op. 24
4. Concerto for violin & orchestra, Op. 14
5. Romance for cello & orchestra (orch. Henri Büsser), Op. 69
6. Fantaisie for flute & orchestra (orch. Louis Aubert), Op. 79
7. Fantaisie for piano & orchestra (orch. M. Samuel-Rousseau), Op. 111

Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin
Henri Demarquette, cello
Juliette Hurel, flute
Jérôme Ducros, piano

Orchestre de Bretagne
Moshe Atzmon, conductor

Date: 2009
Label: Timpani
http://timpani-records.com/1c1172.php

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Review

A finely performed and recorded ‘concerto’ disc for all Fauré lovers

This fascinating disc gathers together for the first time all of Fauré’s concertante works; a record of concertos, if you like, as Hanna Krooz puts it in her enthusiastic booklet-notes. First comes the Ballade in its piano-and-orchestra arrangement (rather than the original ornate solo version, which even bemused Liszt), played by Jérôme Ducros, whose full-blooded Romanticism would have appealed to a composer who dreaded his music being played “as if the shutters were down”. Here Fauré’s idealised birdsong and prismatic unfolding of ideas are presented with a boldness that is the reverse of, say, Robert Casadesus’s more traditional classic French literalism. The much later Op 111 Fantaisie, too, is given with a scintillating regard for its ceaseless flow of ideas and an exhilarating sense of how the bleakness so characteristic of Fauré’s final years ends in a dazzling exultancy.

Elsewhere the Berceuse, with its comic reminder of the “Eton Boating Song” (albeit in a magically sophisticated form), is excellently played, as is the famous Elégie – even if both are preferable in their violin-and-piano and cello-and- piano versions respectively (never more so than in Charlin’s early recordings with Germaine Thyssens-Valentin as the pianist). The Op 79 Fantaisie for flute and orchestra was a virtuoso test-piece written for the Paris Conservatoire, and the one remaining movement of the Violin Concerto is an interesting failure. Here Fauré reminds you that the idea of a concerto, with its element of display, was foreign to his ardent but fastidious nature. But all these works are finely performed and recorded, making this an indispensable acquisition for all lovers of a still gravely misunderstood composer.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: ****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/June09/Faure_1c1172.htm
https://www.thestrad.com/faure-berceuse-for-violin-and-orchestra-orch-gaubert-elegie-for-cello-and-orchestra-violin-concerto-romance-for-cello-and-orchestra-ballade-op19-for-piano-and-orchestra-fantaisie-for-flute-and-orchest/2158.article
https://www.audaud.com/gabriel-faure-concertante-works-ballade-for-piano-and-orchestra-fantasie-for-piano-and-orchestra-berceuse-for-violin-elegie-for-cello-violin-concerto-romance-for-cello-fantasie-for-flute-so/

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Gabriel Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style. His music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with 20th century modernism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Faur%C3%A9

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