Faure Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte

Fauré - Requiem ~ Ravel - Pavane pour une Infante Défunte - Giulini (1986)
EAC+CUE+LOG | FLAC (single files) | 152 MB | Booklet scans | DG 1986

This most peaceful and accepting of all Requiems finds its ideal benefactor in Carlo Maria Giulini, whose characteristically unhurried approach precisely captures the work's calming essence. The effect is hypnotic; at no time does the music reach - neediness, after all, is a remnant of the earthly life left behind. The tranquilizing effect is heightened by the choral sound, which evokes angels welcoming from on high. So utterly spellbinding is Giulini's account that when the final "rest in peace" from the Paradisum fades and fades and fades into gradual nothingness, you won't be able to tell where the music ends and heaven begins.

If I had to pick only a handful of discs to single out as being of extreme worth to me personally - this would be one of them. There are just some works out there where the composer was inspired to record something truly extraordinary. This is one such work and this recording is the best that I know of. I have also spent a lot of time with the Fournet, Rotterdam recording Fauré: Requiem; Pavane; Pelléas et Mélisande . And while I think that is a fine recording, this ASMF recording with Marriner is a cut above. The playing is sensuous and refined, the tempos are perfect to convey the feeling of the music. This recording has lifted me up at some very low times in my life, and never ceases to convey power, wonder, and awe.

We know Gabriel Fauré the composer well but little the pedagogue. This recording aims to highlight the influence of the composer in France and even in Europe when, in 1896, he became professor at the Paris conservatory taking over from Massenet. The program of this disc wishes to bring together one of the work of his last périod and compositions by his illustrious students: Ravel, Boulanger et Enesco.

Pianist Hervé Sellin offers us a jazz recomposition of the works of Fauré and Ravel.

The second album of the retrospective we've dedicated to Markus Klinko prior to the opening of the Paris exhibition of his work as a photographer. During his time as an internationally renowned harpis he gathered the best French cahmber works from the late romantic and modern eras. This album includes such masterpieces as Debussy’s Dances or Ravel’s Introduction et allegro, pieces in which the harp successfully replaces the piano (Fauré’s Berceuse) or witty arrangements (Satie’s Gymnopédie transcribed for flute and harp).

Naida Margaret Cole (born 28 October 1974 in Durham, North Carolina, U.S.) is a Canadian-American concert pianist who left a successful career as a recording artist and touring musician in 2007 to pursue medicine at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, where she is currently enrolled. She has recorded music by Fauré, Chabrier, Satie and Ravel. She has also presented the music of Messiaen, Bartok, Beethoven, Brahms, Chabrier, Chopin, Corigliano, Debussy, Fauré, Liszt, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Schubert, Clara Schumann, Scriabin and Stravinsky. She has performed with the Toronto Symphony, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and National Arts Centre Orchestras and also with Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica, the London Sinfonietta and the Munich, Warsaw and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras.

Menahem Pressler, a living legend of piano, records his first ever solo album for Deutsche Grammophon, with repertoire by Debussy, Fauré and Ravel.

The listener may see the phrase "piano Erard 1905" on the cover of this album of Ravel works and wonder whether the historical performance movement has really gone too far. And truly this is, at least from a modern standpoint, an unusual and even bizarre Ravel recording. It's not so much the Erard piano, which sounds as though it was made to play Fauré and Debussy, but is not so far from other concert grands. What's strange is the general interpretation by Flemish historical keyboardist Jos van Immerseel, known mostly for his performances of music from the eighteenth and perhaps the early nineteenth centuries.