Fauré Piano Quintetseric Le Sage

Flautist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Éric Le Sage with present a new album "Mozart Stories", featuring some of Mozart's best sonatas which were originally written for Violin and Piano, now arranged for Flute. Emmanuel Pahud has been captivated by the works of Mozart from a young age! As he puts it, "Mozart is the reason why I became a musician". The musician also shares a birthday with Mozrt which emphasises his reverance for the great composer.

Faure may still not be the best known composer of chamber music, but this issue with two of his major works tells us yet again what a good one he was. The excellent craftsmanship we may take for granted, but although he did not wear his heart on his sleeve there is a real passion in this writing too, as the surging opening movement of the C minor Piano Quartet (written in his early thirties) reminds us.

These readings of Fauré's two late piano quintets by the Schubert Ensemble of London are paradoxical. The group's performances are strong-willed and purposeful in the outer movements, particularly in the C minor Quintet's ever accelerating Finale, yet soft-focused and sensuous in the central slow movements, especially the D minor Quintet's deeply dolorous Adagio. The tone changes from robustly incisive to sweetly sonorous, the ensemble from vigorously muscular to smoothly refined, and the rhythms from sharply accented to softly undulating.

Gabriel Fauré has frequently been termed “the father of Impressionism”; the Parisian music world of Fauré’s time was characterised by emancipation from German hegemony in chamber music after the traumatic outcome of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and by the beginnings of an original French musical language beyond the opera. Fauré shows himself from his Late Romantic and passionate sides: already the beginning impetuously rushes forward, but for all its passion it quite strictly and surprisingly follows the formal conventions in its polyphony. The Mozart Piano Quartet skilfully combines the traditional with the new; in three-dimensional sound the enormous dynamic expressive breadth of the ensemble develops its full potential.

Flautist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Eric Le Sage play arrangements of short pieces and songs by four German composers of the mid-19th century: Robert Schumann and his wife Clara (born Clara Wieck), and Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny.

This seven-disc box set from Alpha presents Robert Schumann’s complete chamber music with piano, played by a highly respected interpreter of Schumann's works, Eric Le Sage. The pianist is joined by outstanding musicians Paul Meyer, Francois Salque, Franck Braley, Antoine Tamesit, and others, who enable the listener to fully appreciate these masterful works written by genius of German Romanticism.

Composed in 1879, the Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck belongs to the fruitful final period of his creative life. It heralded the start of an impressive sequence of late orchestral and chamber pieces which set the seal upon his career. The Piano Quintet was premiered in Paris on 17 January 1880 by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saëns at the piano. During the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 1920s, it was Gabriel Fauré who made the most substantial and lasting contribution to French chamber music. Faurés Piano Quintet no.1 renews the powerful concentration of his earlier Piano Quartets in its outer movements, while also looking forward to the composers later works in the sophisticated phrasing and chromaticism of its extended Adagio. Vibrant and spirited, it may be counted among the composers finest creations.

For many listeners, the keyboard works of Gabriel Fauré epitomize French music of the fin de siècle, typically because its languorous melodies and subtle harmonies are at times evocative of late Romantic parlor music. Yet Angela Hewitt defends Fauré's piano music from such a superficial judgment, demonstrating that it is much more substantial in content than the conventional piano pieces of the time, and that the difficulties one encounters in his music are akin to the complexities in Bach. Hewitt's polished performances of the Thème et variations, two Valses-caprices, three Nocturnes, and the Ballade are proof of her longtime commitment to this music, and her penetrating insights into Fauré's expressions and technical artistry reveal levels of inventiveness that are often missed in less competent performances. Of course, having played Fauré for most of her life, Hewitt has intimate knowledge of the music, and her sensitivity and control communicate precisely the effects she wishes, so the music never seems sloppily sentimental or vaguely sketched.