This is the first volume in Louis Lortie's new series
devoted to the music of Gabriel Faure.
As he states in the booklet notes, 'this album
purposely travels through Faure's various creative
periods, from easily appealing early pieces such as
the Pavane and the melodie "Apres un reve"
through to the late and unjustly neglected Preludes,
a masterpiece of condensed harmonic and melodic
audacity.'
Released after four volumes in an ongoing Chopin
series – 'an exceptionally high order of playing' (BBC
Music) – this album, besides the masterful late Op.
103 Preludes, unsurprisingly features in Lortie's
words 'the romantic, post-Chopinesque genres of
the Nocturnes and Barcarolles along with pathbreaking
small forms of neoclassical aesthetics such
as the suite from Pelleas et Melisande, here in a
solo piano version highlighting the ambiguity of a
canvas of pianistic and orchestral colourings that
would be a major influence on Faure's successors'.
1. Pavane in F-sharp Minor, Op. 50
2. Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 66
3. Nocturne No. 4 in E-flat Major, Op. 36
4. Barcarolle No. 6 in E-flat Major, Op. 70
5. Apres Un Reve, Op. 7, No. 1
6. I. Prelude
7. III. Sicilienne
8. II. Fileuse
9. IV. La Mort De Melisande
10. Barcarolle No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 90
11. Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat Major, Op. 63
12. Prelude No. 1
13. Prelude No. 2
14. Prelude No. 3
15. Prelude No. 4
16. Prelude No. 5
17. Prelude No. 6
18. Prelude No. 7
19. Prelude No. 8
20. Prelude No. 9 |
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